Cannes to somewhere else, help!

[trvlbug]

Hi everyone,

 

We are arriving in Cannes on Serenade of the Seas on September 29th. We are tendering so if the ship arrives at 9 I am assuming that we won't be on shore much before 10. The last tender back to the ship is at 5:30 so I am thinking that I would want to be at the port by 4:30-5:00, correct?

 

My dilemna is that I don't want to stay in Cannes but not sure if I would have time to go anywhere else. I am interested in St. Paul de Vence but not sure if we would have enough time with taking the train and bus. I cannot drive there so that is out.

 

My other thought was to go to Antibes and Biot. I would do this by train and bus also and they are much closer than SPdV. Just dont want to spend the whole time travelling and not have a good amount of time in the place I choose.

 

Am I overthinking this or expecting too much? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks

 

trish

[marazul]

Antibes is very easy by train from Cannes. You would have plenty of time. It would take you forever to add buses to go either to Biot or St Paul. For St Paul, take the train to Cagnes-sur-Mer and then figure out the buses. If you do not want to drive, consider a tour. Antibes is your best option.

[Hlitner]

Trish, We think your thinking is "right on" track and you have done a great job laying out the options. DW and consider St Paul de Vence as one of our favorite places in the region, and would agree that getting there by public transit (in this case train plus bus) takes a lot of time. Since you have ruled out renting a car (now pretty easy to do in Cannes) then your other option would be to take an excursion (ship or private) that includes St Paul de Vence.

 

Hank

[trvlbug]

Thanks to both of you. We may perhaps rent a car. Any idea what the road is like from Cannes to SPdV, curvy, drop offs etc. As you can tell I am wanting a very decent road lol. How long to drive there (barring any unforseen circumstances)?

 

In Civitavecchia we are renting a car and going to Ovieto and Civita as we have been to Rome before. I have heard the road is a nice 2 lane highway and fairly easy drive so if it were the same in Cannes I may attempt it. Thanks for the help, it is much appreciated.

 

Oh, and the tour to SPdV is almost $100 a person and is 4.5 hours. I am thinking that it is not worth is because we will have a bus load and only spending a couple of hours there I do not want to follow the crowd to look at a wall etc. and spend most of our time waiting on bathroom breaks lol.

 

Trish

[marazul]

The road is very good. You can take the autoroute to Villeneuve-Loubet and then the road up to St Paul past La Colle is very good. You will have some traffic going through Cagnes-sur-Mer. On the way back, stay on the shore and drive back from Cagnes-sur-Mer through Antibes, Cap d'Antibes and Juan-les-Pins.

 

Get precise directions in viamichelin.com or in google maps. If you have a Garmin or other GPS, load the Europe maps and bring it along. It will save you $ in the car rentals.

[Hlitner]

Agree with Marazul and we always take our own GPS (we have one with European maps). There are two parking areas at St Paul de Vence. If you get lucky you can sometimes find a free space along the road near the entrance. Otherwise, just past the entrance there is a large indoor parking garage which does charge....but its reasonable. If you can get out of Cannes without getting stuck in traffic......the journey takes about 45-50 min each way. We sometimes will drive to St Paul de Vence in the morning...stay for lunch...and then head directly to the coast and stop in Antibes on our return drive.

 

Hank

[trvlbug]

Thanks again to the both of you! Sounds like I may be able to do it. If not then it will be the train to Antibes. The reason I am unsure of driving is that my DH did all the driving and was good at it. However, he has a disability that has affected his neck so cannot turn it, therefore cannot drive. So I have been driving everywhere now but not in Europe! So I am a bit apprehensive. Been over 20 years since I have driven stick lol. Wish me luck! And if you hear on the news of chaos on the roads in Cannes on September 29th you'll know I'm attempting it lol!

 

Trish

[marazul]

You can easily rent an automatic car for a little more than the basic stick category. That wasn't the case many years ago, but it is now. And be reassured, there are no hairpin bends on the road to St Paul. There are three spots where you might run into traffic: getting out of Cannes, going through Cagnes-sur-Mer and in Antibes, but Sept. 29 is a Sunday (and after the high season) so the traffic will be a LOT less. You should be fine.

 

BTW - have you checked the prices of a private excursion? There are several tour operators mentioned on this board. It can easily take you to StP and Antibes or Biot without your having to worry about it.

[calvin81]

We took the train to Nice from Cannes. Antibes is closer, but didn't have as much to see IMHO. We loved Nice, beautiful old town and beach.

[Bykrunski]

I'm considering taking the train from Cannes to Nice.

 

My concern: too rushed or sufficient time? :confused: :confused:

 

We also dock @ 9:00 am in Cannes; line up for the tender then walk/run to the train station. I don't think we can make the 9:11 am train so it's the 10:41 am train to Nice. Return train @ 3:31 from Nice arriving in Cannes @ 4:02 pm. Presumably we'll need to take the last tender @ 5:30 back to the ship...

 

Thanks for all suggestions & comments.

 

 

 

We took the train to Nice from Cannes. Antibes is closer, but didn't have as much to see IMHO. We loved Nice, beautiful old town and beach.

[Hlitner]

You can easily rent an automatic car for a little more than the basic stick category. That wasn't the case many years ago, but it is now. And be reassured, there are no hairpin bends on the road to St Paul. There are three spots where you might run into traffic: getting out of Cannes, going through Cagnes-sur-Mer and in Antibes, but Sept. 29 is a Sunday (and after the high season) so the traffic will be a LOT less. You should be fine.

 

BTW - have you checked the prices of a private excursion? There are several tour operators mentioned on this board. It can easily take you to StP and Antibes or Biot without your having to worry about it.

 

I will respectfully disagree based on our own experience. It can be very difficult, if not impossible, and expensive to rent an automatic in France or Italy. In fact, I just looked at both Hertz and Budget (we have used both of these offices in Cannes) in Cannes. Hertz does not show any automatics...although it may be possible to get one on special request (at a high price). Budget has plenty of manuals for under 100 Euros per day...but their least expensive automatic is a full size premium car that costs about $300 a day.

 

Personally, we love to drive manuals so do not have a problem. But getting an automatic is often impossible or outrageously expensive.. and getting a small economic automatic is even more impossible. We have started to see more automatics available at the larger airports (but at much higher prices then manuals) so perhaps the "worm will turn" and automatics become widely available at reasonable prices. What is interesting is why the European rental places do not rent cheap automatics...and they really do not cost much more to buy (they are actually cheaper in the US then manuals) and the gas mileage for autos is now about the same as manuals.

 

Hank