The bass reaches you before the boat does. It travels over the water, low and patient, from somewhere out past the buoys where the yachts sit at anchor with their decks lit gold. May, in Cannes, and the town has…
Supporting Guide
The Yacht Scene at the Cannes Film Festival
At dusk the tenders begin their crossing. Small, low, running without lights until they clear the moorings, then a lamp at the stern and a wake folding out behind them across the flat water of the bay. They carry people…
Where to Eat in Cannes During the Festival
The market smells of it first. Peaches split too ripe, wet basil, the iron tang of fish laid out on ice a street back from the port. By nine the light is already white over the water, and the town…
What to Wear to the Cannes Film Festival
The morning of a premiere, the light comes off the water white and flat. The Croisette smells of salt and warm stone and the diesel of the tender boats. Somewhere a garment bag is already hanging in a hotel window,…
Where to Stay for the Cannes Film Festival
The Croisette in May holds a particular light in the early evening, gold sliding into rose over the water, the palms throwing long shadows across a pavement already thick with people in gowns they have no intention of sitting down…
How to Get to Cannes
The plane banks over the water and the coast arrives before the city does. A thin ribbon of pale buildings, the hills behind them still holding the last of the morning haze, the sea going from slate to something closer…
The Palais des Festivals and the Red Carpet
The carpet goes down in the late afternoon, when the light off the Croisette has gone the color of weak tea, and for an hour or so it belongs to no one. Men in gloves smooth it flat with their…
How to Attend the Cannes Film Festival
In May the town smells of salt and warm stone, and by late afternoon the Croisette fills with people who have dressed for something. Cars idle. A woman adjusts the hem of a gown at a crosswalk. Somewhere behind the…
Victoria’s Guide to the Cannes Film Festival
The Croisette in the last hour before evening does something to the light. The sea turns from blue to a beaten silver, the palms throw long shadows across the pavement, and everyone walking toward the Palais seems, briefly, to have…
The Circuit de Monaco, Corner by Corner
The Circuit de Monaco is worth understanding before you arrive. Most people come for the yachts, the champagne, and the sense that they have wandered into a film, and all of that is real. But the reason the whole spectacle…
Monaco Grand Prix Nightlife: Amber Lounge and the Parties
The racing stops at sundown, and Monaco changes gear rather than shuts down. I have spent race week nights moving between a yacht in the harbour, a club that does not acknowledge the clock, and a terrace where you can…
Where to Eat in Monaco During Race Week
Race week in Monaco compresses a year of appetite into four days. The principality, which is small enough to cross on foot in under an hour, swells with people who all want the same tables at the same hours, and…
