By Lynda Kavanagh, aka The “WOW” Gal
Cannes is a wild and crazy place and especially if you are there during the Cannes Film Festival. We had been to Cannes several times and really didn’t want to stay in the heart of the city so we were quite excited to see an RCI that was in a neighbouring community Mandelieu. It is only 8km outside of Cannes but the communities blend together so you really don’t know where you leave Cannes and when you enter Mandelieu.
This was a great RCI, very professionally run, clean and secure. The people at the front desk spoke enough English so that I could communicate with them. It is about a 15 story apartment with either a mountain view or an ocean view. The ocean view was of the Marina so mostly all you saw were parked boats, we were luck to get the mountain view and it was spectacular.
To get there from the Nice airport, you simply ride the beach road to Cannes, keep going until you hit the Cannes golf course. (Not the start of the golf course, it will be at the west end of the golf course). There is a turn to the right just before a small bridge over a canal inlet. You are then only about 2 km from the resort.
This resort had an Olympic size swimming pool. The next apartment complex had a small store that offered bakery, coffee and newspapers. We made our coffee in the apartment but D’Arcy went daily for fresh baking and our newspapers. (He reads the French Papers and I read the Herald Tribune).
Across the street there is a large shopping mall with a huge Casino (supermarket). I mean huge. This is the largest we have ever seen. There is also a Casino restaurant that is a great place for good, inexpensive food, in a buffet type format. (We ran into this concept when we were in Paris and found that sometimes it was easier and less expensive to eat in this type of restaurant than to cook in the apartment. That said the apartment had a microwave and stovetop.
This photo is of the hillside.
Mandelieu is very deceiving. We originally thought it was small until we went for a bike ride and, to our surprise, the community is very large. It is great to explore, but the traffic is heavy and you are primarily on the roads if you move away from the beach road. I found that the shopping was not that great, primarily the beach shops and a few other retail stores.
There were lots of places to have wine and/or a meal. Our first day we went down to the beach and had lunch and met some people who were from Australia, had an apartment in Mandelieu as well as one in London. They also had a sailboat that they could live on.
D’Arcy and I were jealous that they could afford that “vagabond” lifestyle. I’d love to be able to do that – 3 months at a time in different parts of the world.
You could easily spend a week here, going into Cannes or even back to Antibes (back east towards the airport), or you could go west and ride the mountains. There is a train station about 4km from the resort. One day it was rainy so we trained it to Grasse to purchase perfume.
Grasse is also deceiving in its size, go to the old town and be prepared to do lots of exploring.
Highlights: The mountain view of the resort, the beach, the golf course (it was always empty, we wish we’d have brought our clubs), lots of places to eat or just enjoy the wine.
Didn’t like: No complaints
Organized Tours: No
Would we return to the resort: For sure
Tags: France by Bicycle, RCI by bicycle, RCI Maeva Club Hotel Cannes Marina, WOW Communications, WOW Tours