The rosé is flowing freely and the purple bougainvillea is in full bloom on a balmy summer evening at Juan-les-Pins’ five-star waterfront hideaway, Hôtel Belles Rives. It is a scene redolent, in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, of the “diffused magic of the hot sweet South … the soft-pawed night and the ghostly wash of the Mediterranean far below”.
Those words, from Fitzgerald’s novel Tender is the Night, were probably written in this very spot. Back in 1925, when Fitzgerald was working on his novel, this hotel was a private villa that he rented for himself, his wife, Zelda, and daughter, Scottie.
