The rich on the French Riviera are bored and boring, so I escaped them
F Scott Fitzgerald said something clever about the rich, I can’t remember what. The rich are different? They’re always drunk and disappointed? Anyway, no need to look it up, because one thing I do know: the rich are boring, not to mention bored.
I see the mega-rich up and down the French Riviera and they all have the same plastic dissatisfied faces, and the same designer clothes. They all stay in tediously formal hotels that cost thousands a night. If they aren’t in Monte Carlo, they’re in Cannes. If they aren’t in Cannes, they’re off to Saint Tropez to buy another handbag and stare at mega-yachts from the terraces of oyster bars.
Juan-les-Pins: unpretentious.Credit: Alamy
But if you’re not as rich, and more interested in life’s variety, you should head to Juan-les-Pins. It’s conjoined with Antibes, the Riviera town for the discerning and unpretentious. Its main street is cheerful with bar terraces where drinks don’t cost an oligarch’s ransom, and its promenades ogle the setting sun.
Juan-les-Pins barely has a designer boutique, but it does have a petanque pitch under the pine trees where retirees congregate. Locals pass you with supermarket shopping bags and dogs. Juan-les-Pins is the relaxed Riviera that has let out a happy sigh, thrown off its designer duds, and stuck its toes into the lapping Mediterranean.
Yet if you want that French Riviera glamour, you need only walk – or join the morning joggers – along the seafront towards Antibes, and you’ll soon find yourself admiring villas fit in the old days for Hollywood stars and famous writers.
And just there, before you’ve gone far at all, is Hotel Belles Rives, a throwback slice of 1920s style. Fitzgerald stayed here when it was Villa Saint-Louis, calling it the “right place to rough it, an escape from the world.” The Great Gatsby had just been published, and the American writer settled down here to start his even greater masterpiece, Tender is the Night.
The entrance to Bar Fitzgerald at Hotel Belles Rives.
Today, the Belles Rives – a hotel since 1929 – is one of the few remaining family-owned hotels on the Riviera. It’s a notch down from the coast’s top luxe hotels but, like Juan-les-Pins itself, more relaxed and more reasonably priced.
Only someone fascinated by the super-rich like Fitzgerald could call this villa roughing it. It has elegant art deco design, a fancy restaurant, a spa, Hermes wallpaper. Red and yellow light from stained-glass splashes mosaic floors. Hand-blown glass vases sit on occasional tables.
The breakfast terrace at Hotel Belles Rives offers sumptuous views over the Juan Gulf.
Like Juan-les-Pins itself, though, Hotel Belles Rives has no pretentiousness. The modest reception area is endearingly old-fashioned. You rattle up to your room in a wrought-iron lift with clanging doors. The terraces that spill down to the water probably haven’t changed since Fitzgerald’s day: whitewashed walls, red roof tiles, lipstick-pink bougainvillea, blue sea.
The views are sumptuous. You can sit here and eat lobster at the beach restaurant, or recline on a lounger under a parasol and stare out at the Juan Gulf, or paddle out into the peacock water. Water-skiing was popularised right here by Jazz Age celebrities, so you could take a spin out into the silvery Mediterranean too.
You can sleep here with sound of waves sloshing below your window.
This is one of the most delightful and hedonistic corners of the French Riviera, and you might hardly want to move from your deckchair, although later you’ll want to potter up to the lovely Bar Fitzgerald for a champagne cocktail.
You fall asleep to the sound of waves sloshing below your window – something money can hardly buy, even on the French Riviera. Next morning you’ll be back on the terrace again, munching croissants, still bedazzled by the view, and delighted to have discovered Juan-les-Pins.
The details
Stay
Hotel Belles Rives has a private beach, pontoon and water-skiing school. La Passagère restaurant (open Wednesday to Sunday) has a Michelin star. The Fitzgerald Bar and (in summer) Restaurant La Plage are more informal dining options. Rooms start from €160 ($258) in the low season but may be up to €800 in the high season. See bellesrives.com
Fly
Emirates flies to Nice from Melbourne and Sydney via Dubai. See emirates.com
The writer stayed as a guest of Hotel Belles Rives.
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