Île St. Marguerite
Cannes,
Provence,
France
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Adam came to visit this weekend, which was a lot of fun. When he arrived, we went to watch the feux d'artifices on the beach with a bottle of rosé. It was some kind of public holiday so they were celebrating. Some of the fireworks were being let off right next to us which made me a little uncomfortable, I hoped they wouldn't fall on us. Funnily enough, as soon as Adam decided to come and visit me, Nice suddenly became slightly cold! The weather has been very hot the whole time I've been here! Now it is a bit chilly, making it perhaps a bit too cold to go swimming at night.
The next day we took a ferry to Île Sainte Marguerite, an island by Cannes. The island had no cars and only a spattering of houses. We spent the whole day with a Romanian girl who I met on the trip to Antibes. We had 8 hours there before the ferry came to take us back, yet she seemed terribly impatient to constantly hurry us along and drag us around to things she wanted to see. She got quite upset with us if she didn't get her way straight away, not allowing us to chill and read a book when we found somewhere pleasant for a minute or so, despite having more than enough time to see everything. She either got very angry (looked like she was on the verge of a tantrum), or started begging us with "pleeeeasse" in a high voice for ages until we did what she said. Then at the end, when we'd seen everything there was to see (a castle, the views, the forest, and the beach), and still had quite a lot of time left, she kept complaining about being bored!
She was a controlling, paranoid creature; terrified of running out of time, despite having many hours left (she wanted to go to wait for the ferry an hour early in case we missed it, and always tried to force us to run everywhere), terrified of snakes being everywhere, terrified of dogs, of all animals really, terrified of tiny waves (if she is scared of those excuses for waves then she should never go to Australia). Wanted to choose all the pizzas when we were getting a few to share. Kept trying to force me to swim with her because she was 'scared'. Cancelled her scuba diving trip in case the oxygen was 'not good quality'. Quite odd.
The island wasn't bad, quite pretty in some parts, and stunning views of the Mediterranean, but stony beaches really aren't that great. I used to think that sand was rather irritating, the way it sticks to everything, but it is much better than pebbles for a beach. The pebbles hurt! When we got back to Nice, Adam and I went and got some Framboise Tartes (Raspberry and Custard tarts, mmmm), which we'd been dreaming about all day.
