high-end rental car : Travel Côte d’Azur in style
Travel Cote d’Azur in style with a high-end rental car
Cap d’Antibes is the millionaire’s playground in the French Riviera. Let your rental car through wrought-iron gates and onto a cobbled driveway shaded by palm trees and lined with terracotta pots of scarlet fuchsia. Drop your car keys into a waiting porter’s hand, raise my sunglasses, and squint at the Imperial Garoupe, with its peach walls and bee-buzzed flowerbeds. The Mediterranean sun is hot on your face.
Cap d’Antibes still retains a 1950s chic on a Riviera which, in many places, is living on reputation but overrun by concrete and mass tourism. This little cape 20 minutes out of Nice, however, remains exclusive. Villas nestle behind oleander hedges and movie stars stay in its discreet hotels during the Cannes Film Festival.
Cap d’Antibes still has the bougainvillea, terracotta roofs and cheerful wooden fishing boats that once inspired 19th-century painters. The rocky pine-scented coastline is beautiful, and much of it is accessible to the public. The sun beats gold on hot summer days, setting the cicadas chirping and sunbathers wading topless into the aquamarine water.
Transat en bord de mer Hotel Imperial Garoupe.
At the wheel of an high-end rental car, discover Cannes, and its harbourside glamour
Glamorous Cannes sets camera flashes popping at its film festival in May, when stars pose in tuxes and full-length gowns on the red carpet. But the glitz doesn’t end there. Throughout the year, as you walk among the designer bars, couture shops and palaces of La Croisette, the wealth and glamour of this city cannot fail to impress: admiring Lamborghinis, Rolls-Royce and Bentleys and celebrity-spotting on the chic sunlounger-striped beaches and liner-sized yachts moored at the port are perennial Cannes pastimes.
Nice Old Town Treasures and Castle Hill
Drive an high-end rental car and discover the Old Town of Nice (or Vieux Nice as the locals call it) is one of the city’s main attractions and a must-see for any visitor… Not particularly because of a huge amount of unmissable historical sites, but because it is a hive of activity, buzzing both day and night, which is ideal to wander around, to get lost in and to get a drink or a good traditional meal whilst enjoying the unmistakable baroque Mediterranean vibe.
So here’s a quick walking tour to make sure you don’t miss any of the nicest parts, even though I’d advise the most adventurous to just get lost in the meander of streets and follow your instincts to make the most of the place – after all, it’s too small to get really lost and the sea is never too far away!
