My perfect way to escape the crazy Cannes crowd
AS I walked past colourful houses next to canals, over footbridges and through car-free squares, I could easily have been in Venice.
In fact I was strolling through Port Grimaud, a dinky development started in the early 1960s that turned a marshy French river mouth on the Mediterranean into a desirable holiday village. Artist Victor Vasarely was commissioned to design the stained-glass windows in its church, and Joan Collins is said to have a home here.
As I pottered around stalls selling lavender bags and olive oil soap, the contrast with the pretty medieval village of Grimaud, four miles away, couldn’t have been greater.
The village, perched high on a rocky outcrop, felt deserted as I wandered narrow lanes, passed shuttered stone houses and climbed the steps to the ruins of the 11th Century castle. My steep walk was rewarded with sweeping views from the ramparts of chestnut, cork, oak and pine forests, and the dazzling Gulf of St Tropez, where our cruise ship, the Azamara Journey, waited for our return.
Ignoring excursions to the fleshpots of Cannes and the perfumeries of Grasse, I had instead opted for one with the least amount of time spent on a coach, and soon I was back on board the ‘reimagined’ Azamara Journey – fresh from a prow-to-stern revamp.
Catering for fewer than 700 passengers, the ship is just the right size. There is plenty of room for speciality restaurants such as the Prime C steakhouse, a modern Italian called Aqualina, and a spacious lounge, the Living Room, with hanging birdcage chairs, velvet sofas and complimentary tapas. Yet it is also small enough so that there are no long walks down telescopic corridors back to your cabin when you realise you’ve forgotten to take your reading specs to dinner.
On deck the new Patio (formerly the casual Pool Grill) is the place to dine al fresco on warm evenings. Inside you’ll find interactive ‘technology tables’ – not only fun to tap into a world map to look up where Azamara Journey and her sister ship, Azamara Quest, can take you, but also to send e-postcards home.
Drinks from the bars, wine with meals, bottled water and cappuccinos are included in the fare, enhancing the sociable atmosphere on board.
Meanwhile the Nights In Private Places package (about £290 unless you are in one of the swishest suites) gives couples exclusive use of the Sanctum Spa terrace so you can wallow in the hot tub, then enjoy dinner by moonlight cooked on a hot-stones barbecue before a butler turns down the duvet on a double sunbed and shimmies away, returning the next morning with your breakfast tray.
Azamara Club Cruises focuses on destinations and also features evening excursions. That means you might enjoy a tour of the Picasso Museum in Malaga after it has closed to the public, take an after-dark gondola ride through Venice, or simply dine ashore or stroll with the locals after dinner on board.
Off-the-beaten-track ports of call for Azamara Journey this year include the remote Lofoten Islands in Arctic Norway, Koper
in Slovenia to visit the Skocjan Caves containing the largest underground canyon in the world, and handsome Opatija in Croatia, once a fashionable resort of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 19th Century.
Come winter, Azamara Journey will sail off through the Suez Canal following the sun to South East Asia and the Far East.