Juan les Pins

So where do I start with tales about our holidays? I suppose the first thing is to tell you about Juan les Pins, where we actually stayed.

Juan les Pins is a seaside resort about halfway between Cannes to the west & Nice to the east. In March it is still a fairly sleepy place, although, on our second weekend there, a particularly sunny day, it was heaving as day trippers arrived from all over to appreciate the azure seas, the views across to the Massif de L’Esterel & Cannes, the marina with its luxury boats. It certainly gave you the impression how busy a place it would be at the height of the season or during one its festivals. We were relieved we’d gone in the quiet time.

Along the Promenade du Soleil

Looking across the sea to the Massif de L'Esterel

With Cannes behind

The marina beyond

Needless to say there are loads of pine trees there.

I first became aware of Juan when my then French penfriend boasted about her holiday there. In the 60s it was regarded as a more affordable in place.

I gather it really gained international renown in the 1920s when the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald & Ernest Hemingway favoured it. 

And along came jazz. In 1951 the jazz player Sydney Bechet married here & from then on took his annual holidays in Juan. With Claude Luter, he set Juan Les Pins up as the European capital of Jazz. After Bechet’s death in 1959, the first jazz festival here was born, featuring many of the greats such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie & Miles Davis – what a line up for the first festival! The festivals still happen every year in July.

The influence of jazz can be seen throughout Juan. Along one road are the handprints of various jazz legends. There is the Carrefour de la Nouvelle Orléans with the New Orleans jazz bar on the corner next to the Hemingway. Restaurants & bar resound to the strains of jazz, even in our hotel. Statues of jazz players & artworks of jazz instruments abound.

 

One jazz artist after another

Dave Brubeck

The other great attraction of Juan for us was a restaurant we found, Ti Toques. The onion soup was out of this world. Unlike you usually find in France where a large slice of bread covered with grated cheese is first put in the bowl, followed by the soup, here they toasted some, I think, gruyere cheese on half a baguette and served it on one side. It was truly delicious. We thoroughly enjoyed our meals there – turbot & scallops with a champagne sauce, salmon, fillet of beef Rossini, slow cooked lamb shanks. I salivate at the very thought.