Wednesday 24th August

The only reason that I’m filling in today is for Mum who thought that we had lost a day previously on the trip.
We breakfasted on the terrace, bus to town for lunch where it was tooo hot, back to the hotel, reading sleeping, swimming, drinking – really just blobbing out.
I watched the fifth stage of the Tour of Spain, they have to be mad to do these sort of hills day after day.

Thursday 25th August

Got some lovely blog comments this morning from Lu and Jane which was nice. We always love to hear from you guys.

Not so hot this morning and a bit of a breeze out on the terrace during breakfast. We got the 9.05am bus to town and then went looking for a bookshop so that we could get a better map of Italy than the one we have. After spending ages looking through both of the bookshops in Antibes we came away with nought. They had maps of Canada, Africa, Portugal, Australia but not a one on Italy which we can actually see around the coast past Nice.

Hot enough now and drinks time – too early for a beer but iced tea and milkshake. The iced tea was nice but the milkshake was just some sort of milk product with chocolate flavouring added. Watery as. The milk we have had in France is long life stuff and not even in the freezers in the supermarkets and you can buy it in 6 packs all shrink wrapped together.

We were heading to the old Grimaldi Castle which changed to the Picasso Museum in 1997 by the then mayor of Antibes. Picasso spent 1946 in Antibes when he produced his Antibes period. But along the way we got waylaid by the market which was in every square, nook and cranny down from the Bus station or Gare Routier. Again ladies linen and cotton stuff everywhere but the stall that really caught my eye was the one selling leather handbags of every colour and style you could imagine. They were doing a roaring trade with the ladies almost tripping over each other to get to the salespeople behind the stall with their choice and their money.

On we trudged and it was getting hotter, found another bookshop run by an Englishwoman who had been running it for 10 years whilst her husband captained one of the luxury ships around the Med. She hadn’t seen him for 4 months and was hoping that this weekend she would but that had just been dashed as he was having to head someplace else because the owner wanted to spend a few days extra some place in Italy. Then he’s taking the ship to Turkey. Saw a photo of the huge ship – wow! We bought a couple of new novels as our reading supply is down to the last book.

We went up through the bric-a-bak and antiques market and into the Place du Bari where the cathedral is and right next to it is Musee Picasso. It’s a magnificent building built by the Grimaldi family right on the coast facing out over the Mediterranean. Sparkling blue water for as far as you can see. We went up the long rampways and into the lower part of the museum. On the ground floor there was an exhibition by Nicolas Stael, Anna-Ev Bergman and Hans Hartang – ok but not our cup of tea. The top two floors are all Picasso. His wife gave a second lot of paintings to the museum in 2008 before she died and this now allows them to change the works around and show new ones on a more regular basis. Probably his most famous painting of this period is La Joie de Vivre and is his emblem of his Antibes period. There was a wall full of plates that he had made and decorated. There was the occasional painting or drawing that showed that he could really draw and paint but for the most part we looked at faces that had weird proportions and bodies that were entangled with animals and fish and owls. I wouldn’t say no to owing one but I would choose carefully first.

We came out and went on down the hill through the narrow streets and found a place to have lunch. It was really hot and a number of times my elbows slipped on the table top as the sweat was running down my arms and legs and elsewhere. This is the first time we have been outside in a restaurant under the awnings when every couple of minutes a fine water spray lets forth from along the supporting framework. Very refreshing for an all too short period of time but I guess if it went all of the time everything would end up wet.

Jannie looked up the time for the next bus and we headed for the centre of town and to the bus station to catch the bus home for a swim. Boy was that cooling and then it was back to our room to watch more of the cycling Tour of Spain.