Twenty-four Hours of Chic in Cannes

One of the things the French Navy does right is "l'escale."  The word even sounds better in French, "escale", than it does in English, "port visit".

This paragraph will make US Navy people crazy jealous.... So here, this time, the ship is out for a month.  And the planning-friendly port visit is fixed for halfway through the "deployment".  The ship pulls into a fabulous city for a weekend.  There is no buddy-system, no curfew, or standing-watch required: have a good weekend, everyone, see you Sunday afternoon.    

And if he is going to have some time-off, I'm going to do all I can (move heaven and earth to find somewhere for my kids and the dog to spend the night), so that I can have some time off from full-time-parenthood to be with him.  A twenty-four hour weekend getaway with my handsome husband, YES please.

The escale was in Cannes, just an hour and a half away from where we live, making it totally doable for the twenty-fours Phil was free.  I'm not in any way "cannes" type of girl.  I wear a lot of Old Navy clothes here in brand-name-only-fashion-France, thank-you-very-much, but I did go out and buy a new pair of designer sunglasses before my weekend amidst all the glitz and glamour.  Phil rolled his eyes at me, but they helped give me some confidence as I, a housewife, walked down the croisette with all the divas.

I had a lovely, bubbly bath at the fancy hotel and then a quiet, relaxed dinner with my husband.  The next lazy morning, we consumed four of our favorite things before 12:30pm--a café creme and a pain au chocolate and an hour later, a carafe of rosé and a pizza (the french make really good pizza).  For us, that's living big!

Weekend getaways are the best!  Weekend getaways in Cannes, France---vive la French Navy.