Cannes harbour, home to lots of shiny, expensive motor yachts. And fish…
I wasn’t sure what to expect of Cannes, in fact I half expected not to like it. I think at the back of my mind I must have associated it with those extravagant boats, and the sort of people who can afford them. But it was a good deal less busy than any of the other places we visited and really rather handsome.
We took a ride on the Ferris Wheel (well, I say ‘we’ but actually it was everyone but me, in truth I’m not overly fond of tall manmade structures)…
Whilst the kids were having fun piloting radio controlled speedboats, I was intrigued to find Lord Brougham here in France…
He was a lawyer, the Lord Chancellor, the inventor of the Brougham carriage, and, apparently, largely responsible for establishing Cannes as a seaside resort. I wondered whether he was connected to Brougham Hall near Penrith which we have visited a few times. It transpires that his family did own the Hall, although he was born and educated In Edinburgh.
On a small hill, just back from the promenade, is the Castre Museum. It’s situated in a medieval building – you can just see the top of the tower in the photo above – which looks a little like a castle, but I’m not sure that it was. The museum has a collection of landscape paintings, but was originally founded to house the assorted objects donated by the nineteenth century Dutch traveller Baron Lycklama.
It’s a fascinating little museum. At the end of our wander around it, we all nominated our favourite exhibit, and all chose different things, which I think testifies to the richness and diversity of what was on display. Personally, I thought the small, characterful carvings from Canada were my favourites (I want to say that they are Inuit, but I think that I am wrong).
There were many masks and sculptures. This may have been the least sophisticated, but I thought that single orange tooth gives him a certain charm.
The final room we looked at was full of musical instruments from around the world, which were both hugely varied, but sometimes surprisingly homogenous…
We all really enjoyed the museum and, as a final treat, we climbed the tower for a superb view over Cannes.
Beating The Bounds 
Not been to Cannes but the Cote D’Azure is stunningly beautiful which means in summer its over-run with people. I’m surprised you managed to find it relatively quiet. I’d love to visit in Spring or Autumn when the colours would be amazing and the lack of people make it a so much more pleasurable experience. I’m interested to see how the Yorkshire crew get on with their visit to Nice later this month