A visit to Antibes

We had been hoping to be able to do something sporty today, like go hiking or skiing. Alas, it was not to be, as the rainy weather that has plagued us over the last days continued... But after a rather lazy day of doing nothing much at all, we decided we ought to do something. Since we had been invited for dinner to my parents place, we figured this was a good occasion to do a bit of touristy stuff in Antibes.

So we jumped into the car and headed down to the old town of Antibes. After a short walk in the unusually empty old town (might have something to do with the miserable weather), we headed for the Picasso museum, which had been reopened recently after some renovations. It is rather impressively located in the Chateau Grimaldi, right in the centre of town. The old castle, which dates back as far as 442 AD, got its name from the Grimaldi family (yes, that would be the Monaco Grimaldis) who were residents from 1383 to 1608. Over the next centuries the castle had several functions, until Antibes invited Pablo Picasso to stay there and use it as his studio, in 1946 (he was living in nearby Golfe Juan with Françoise Gilot. He stayed for a couple of months, and produced quite a few works of art. Later on the museum was to bear his name.

The museum was interesting enough; especially considering the great location of it (the castle offers great views over the old town and the old walls). I’m not generally a big fan of modern art, but Picasso impresses me – the guy really had an extraordinary imagination. There was art from a couple of other artists on display as well, which on the other hand was the type of modern art I find rather silly (the kind, which at least to my untrained eye, looks like something a child randomly splashing paint on a canvas has produced).

Having had our dose of culture, we had a very pleasant walk around the old town.
It was rather atmospheric, with the winds howling, waves rushing up against the walls, and hardly anybody in the streets apart from us (apart from a few Brits - it felt like at least half of the people we ran into were English). Quite different from the summer days, and the hordes of tourists that invade the town... We also took the opportunity to visit the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de l'Immaculée Conception(the main church in Antibes, located just next to the PIcasso museum), in baroque style, as most of the churches in the region are (this one dates back to the 11th century though - the facade was reworked in the 18th century).



We then headed back to our parents place for a delicious dinner of lamb cutlets, followed by a carrot cake (which we had baked earlier today – to bring back old memories from our days in old Blighty, I suppose). Seems that my parents have a busy few weeks ahead of them, with a visit to Rome, some relatives coming over, Opera visits to Genoa & Milan. And of course they need to squeeze in the French lessons and petanque games as well – oh the busy lives of pensioners... ;-)