Located in the southeastern edge of France, alongside the French Riviera, is the glorious and gorgeous city of Cannes. This is an upscale burg comprised mainly of expensive, gated communities, making it the perfect destination for somebody looking to bathe in the lap of luxury. With a population of less than eighty thousand people, it’s clear that Cannes is the kind of place you visit and the kind of paradise most of us can only dream of calling home.
Anybody lucky enough to take a trip to Cannes will realize right away why the city is so desirable. Thanks to its placement near the Mediterranean, the sun shines on Cannes for twelve hours a day during the warm months and the cool months are mild at worst. While it certainly gets hot in Cannes, the evenings are nearly always cool and breezy, making it one of the few places in the world with pitch perfect weather nearly every day of the year. There is also a low incidence of rainfall, seemingly just enough to keep the flora alive but not enough to damper anybody’s plans of boating or lounging on the beach.
Perhaps the most popular spot in Cannes is the famed La Croisette Avenue. This waterfront area is lined with gorgeous palms and overlooks a remarkably beautiful coastline. Some of the most decadent luxury hotels in the world call Cannes home, including the Mirimar and the Martinez. But it isn’t just sun worshipers who flock to Cannes each year; Cannes is also the site of the revolutionary and immensely popular Cannes Film Festival. Since 1939, auteurs and moviemakers alike have entered their films in the festival with the hope of netting the prestigious “Palme d’Or” or at the very least becoming an official selection. This festival has recently lost some of its luster since competing festivals like the Sundance Film Festival have stolen some of its thunder, but this isn’t seen as a major loss to the citizens of Cannes, who have a longstanding hatred of the crowds that the festival draws and the disrespect of their pristine town by the international community. Either way, the festival does bring in a lot of money to the town so it certainly shouldn’t be canceled by any means, even if its importance has waned in recent years.
If you can afford the trip to Cannes, you’ll find more to love than just the beaches and the film festival, though. There are countless festivals that occur in Cannes each year, including the much ballyhooed Carnival on the Riviera and Le Festival d’Art Pyrotechnique, which is an astonishing fireworks extravaganza that puts any Fourth of July fireworks show to shame. The annual Mipim festival consistently draws large crowds as the largest property trade show in the entire world! Events like these make Cannes even more beautiful than it already is and that is certainly saying something! While the Mediterranean region definitely has countless scenes of beauty scattered throughout its coastline, it wouldn’t be a big risk to say that Cannes easily outshines any area nearby.