Cannes, you have my heart.

I don’t even know where to begin when talking about this weekend. All I know is that it can be summed up in one word: Indescribable.

We arrived late Friday afternoon and the day was perfect for the beach. Funny thing is, we never really made it there. Friday just happened to be the Fête de la Musique throughout France. Basically it was a big music party.. which is actually what Fête de la Musique translates to. I’m so incredibly clever and witty. Anyway, we go to the hotel to check in and drop all of our luggage off (I say “all of our luggage” but I’m really referring to everyone else’s luggage and not mine. I was smart enough to take only a backpack and cross-body purse. I’m prepared for my two weeks of backpacking I have ahead of me at the end of the summer). So, we get ready in our swimsuits and get all pretty for the beach and then head out.

Walking down to the beach we get distracted (easily) and stop to eat. Afterwards, we’re out looking for drinks and discover an Italian appreciation festival thingy going on and see a sign for STRAWBERRY BEER. Naturally, we run to the sign and grab us some strawberry beer. Delicious. Then, a little closer to the beach, we try to get to it again. Fail. We discover the sidewalk with all of the handprints of the stars and of course we have to read each of them to find out who’s been there. Guess who I found? TIM BURTON. Gah, I was ecstatic. Seriously. I want to work with Tim Burton before I die, like that’s bucket list material. I love that guy. Right next to the sidewalk was the building where the Cannes Film Festival is held and I HAD to get a picture on the red carpet. Like I said, I’ll be there one day, so this was a dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After this, we try yet again to reach the beach. Double fail. We get distracted by cute, shirtless boys street dancing. It was a grand ole’ time. Theeeeen, since it’s the Fête de la Musique, there are outdoor concerts going on that we become enveloped in. It was such a great time. We found a little band playing on a street that we fell in love with. They played Hey Jude and Sweet Home Alabama. WHAT. So, being the loud Americans that we are, we sang and sang and sang at the top of our lungs with the band, while the rest of the crowd awkwardly stared at us as if we were aliens. Technically, I guess we were. It was such a great time. Buuuuut, we never made it to the beach. But we decided that that was quite alright with us because we’d had such a wonderful time TRYING to get to the beach. Well, I take it back that we never made it. We made it but only for about two minutes to look at it and step in the water for pictures. But by then the sun was starting to go down and it was too late to soak in the sunshine. We decided to try again on Saturday.

Saturday morning rolls around and we are ready for some beach time. It was the first thing we did. We actually made it to the beach. Oh man, it was beautiful. There was a huge rock island thingy that was a short swim off of the coast that Austin, Tessa and I adventured to and explored. The Mediterranean Sea is ridiculously salty. I could taste salt for the rest of the day. We stayed at the beach until almost 7pm and got some really good tans – at least I did. No burning. I was pretty happy about that. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel to get pretty again and get ready for dinner.

Dinner rolls around and we find a nice, little place to eat. And man did I eat. I ate an entire pizza to myself. I’m a champ. And then I ate some crème brûlée on top of the entire pizza. I don’t know what came over me but it was awesome. I just kept hearing Jennifer Lawrence in my head talking about eating an entire pizza by herself and I felt invincible. It was liberating.

Then came Sunday. And Sunday meant coming back home to Lyon. And that was a sad thought. Two days at the beach is not nearly enough when you’re in Cannes. But, we had to come home and come back to the real world. Full of studying for quizzes and homework and other such nonsense..

Wait.. what am I talking about? I’m still in France. So the last statement I made about returning to the real world was irrelevant.