Italy´s worst harbour: Santa Maria Di Leuca
39° 47′ 45.7368” N 18° 21′ 40.8276” E
May 13th
Finally, we have reached the end of the country. Even the ancient Romans called Santa Maria di Leuca for “The Finibus Terrae”, which means the end of the country. We have reached the outermost part of the heel of the Italian boot, where further sailing to the east will inevitably bring you to either Greece or Albania. We choose – in the first place – Greece.
The port of Santa Maria di Leuca is lousy. It’s the most troubled harbour we’ve ever been in. Powerful moles are built, but apparently the authorities have forgotten to consult an engineer, because any wave of the ionic ocean propagates to a turmoil inside the harbour basin. Ronja jumps and dances. It pulls violently in the clamps, it rattles in wires and ropes and closets, and we are close to falling out of the bunk. Damned harbor. And the harbour office is completely unwilling to let us switch to one of the more quiet places in the basin – “they are reserved for big boats”, they let us know. And we do not see any big boats at all in the days, while we are waiting for better weather that can bring us out of Marina di Leuca and on to Greece. A completed lousy harbour. Zero stars out of five.
Mussolini insisted, that the greatest akvaduct of Europe should end in a waterfall, a monument and a 300 steps staircase, to welcome foreigners to Italy. A few times a year they still let out water from the top
That said, the city in itself is quite interesting. We see one of Mussolini’s prestigious projects, an aqueduct that ends in a waterfall and a 300-step staircase, as a kind of respect-giving portal to Italy. We see dozens of classical villas that make one think, that this could have been where the Roman senators in the times of Caesar went out for their summer holiday, but of course it is not, while these mansions probably have only three hundred years of history behind them. We inadvertently attend an Italian funeral. And we see a large number of peculiar installations along the coast, where busy businessmen have compensated for the missing beaches by building metal stands on top of the coastal lava cliffs and then coating the metal frames with wooden boards. And on these now there are several hundreds of sunbeds and umbrellas waiting for sunseeking tourists from northern Italy. Wooden beaches.
What to do if you do not have sandy beaches but “only” lava-cliffs? You build a wooden beach to support sunbeds and parasols
After visiting Santa Maria di Leuca in 2008 a statue of the pope was created. The pope is at the left
Varazze – expensive but boring
44° 21′ 14.5584” N 8° 34′ 6.5028” E
September 28, 2016
We are in Varazze. An exclusive port. The price is € 67 for one night. The harbour is surrounded by modern buildings with restaurants, shipbrokers, fashion boutiques and shops with expensive toys for saillors.
The city resembles Loano with a long beach divided into private pieces each renting sunbeds and then a very long shopping street in the next rank parallel to the beach.
The city seems worn. The port’s wifi does not work, and as a whole Varazze can not match Loano invigorating charm and immediacy. We sail on the next morning.
Varazze seen from the seaside. Beautiful. But you should rather go to Loano instead
Fun to look inside Monaco, but please do not make us stay there
43° 44′ 13.0308” N 7° 25′ 42.2004” E
September 20 – 2016
What do you do, when 40,000 inhabitants and a lot of tourists have to live in just 197 hectares? You stack them. You make sure that several basements are reserved for roads and parking lots. You make sure, that the next floors over the basement floors are reserved for shopping streets, and that the next 20-30 floors are residential areas.
It takes planning, and they are obviously good at that in Monaco. A bit like in Hong Kong. In Monaco however, they have even more Ferraris and Porches in the streets and even more marble tiles on the sidewalks.
We chose to ignore the tiny state as we passed it during our French-Italian Odysee. A few days later however we had a sneak peek at the small principality, when we were hiking there from our harbour in Menton.
It’s fun enough to visit Monaco. But it will never be a preferred target for us. Allready when you look at Monaco harbour, you get the same feeling as in St. Tropez – that everything is about looks, everything is about appearing as flashy as possible, the harbour is all about paying service to the multimillionaire yachts.
There is nothing wrong with that. Monaco sends a signal about how they want the port to be seen. Many people may like that. We do not.
Monaco seen from the sea. The European Manhattan somebody says. Well, probably they are not quite right.
Smart in Monaco. Man practices going on the water…
… It is of course not easy. Pride comes before a big splash :-
Seen from the sea Monaco is a charming blend of new and old
Biggest joke in the Mediterranean: Yes, we have Internet
43 ° 42 ‘31.1184’ ‘N 7 ° 20 ‘14.6688’ ‘E
September 17 – 2016
“Do you have wifi“? (Remember in France it is pronounced not waifai but weefee).
“Yes, we have wifi. And occasionally it even works,” answers the port captain in Beaulieu-sur-mer, France, when we ask to his wifi, and that answer, we have heard also from other truthful port captains.
The less truthful port captains – and they are in the majority – just print with usual self-importance a code for the internet. “Here You are, sir. This is your special password to the Internet“.
This is the biggest joke in the Mediterranean. French harbours have no wifi. And the same goes with a lot of italian harbours.
It is “The emperor’s new clothes” – the fairytale of the Danish writer, Hans Christian Andersen, in which two crooks sell the emperor a set of new clothes, that are so unique, that only those who do well in their jobs, can see the clothes, while those who are not good at their job, will not see it.
No one dares to admit, that they can not see the clothes, because then they would indeed be stupid, so everyone claps his hands and says, that the emperor’s new clothes are fantastic. It is all revealed, when the Emperor shows up his new clothes during a procession through the town, and a little boy says “Hey, he has nothing on at all!”
French and Italian wifi i harbours are made of the same substance.
You rush around the harbour with your computer or your mobile phone. You sit at the port office doorstep. Either there is nothing at all. Or it is so weak, that it is good for nothing.
Right now we can only think of two harbours, where there has been a well-functioning wifi. In Nice, France, and Loano, Italy. Respect to Nice and Loano.
What is it with the French? And the Italians? Come into the current century. Establish a wifi that works! You can get wifi in an airplane ten kilometers above the earth’s surface. You can get wifi in a train. You can get wifi at a cafe. Should you not be able to establish wifi in a harbour?
Come on. We pay 30, 40 € – or in Italy even twice – for one night including wifi. Make it work! Thanks.
Advice wanted: Is there anyone who, while waiting for the French and Italian harbours to realize, that they are involved in a huge scam, can give me some advice on how I get a steady connection to the Internet? Is there a gadget, that I can buy for my ship, which makes me independent of the harbour? I have asked the company Orange, and they sold me a subscription with access to all the company’s own hotspots. It was’nt worth much.
Response awaited with gratitude.
In the shadow of terror: Nice is fascinating – “Je suis Nice”
43° 41′ 37.2156” N 7° 17′ 17.0772” E
29. juli, 2016
Nice: Only when you are four years old as our granddaughter, Nellie, you can in Nice – two weeks after the horrific attack on July 14 – ask if this is a place, where you can buy teddy bears and flowers.
The memorial site for the 84 random people, who were mowed down by an-ISIL terrorist in a heavy truck on Bastille Day in Nice, is for us, who are older than four years, deep, deep, deep into the heart poignant and oppressive.
Flowers, teddy bears, candle lights, poems, obituaries in overwhelming amounts, the whole atmosphere around the memorial site provokes a desire to stand behind the French and tell them that their sorrow is ours, that we share with them in their showdown against terror.
“Je suis Nice“.
Nice is an enchanting city. Cosmopolitan. Rich. Varied. Energetic. Caracterized by art, culture and architecture of the time, when the European aristocracy met here with one another in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Here are many beautiful buildings, several museums, joyful playgrounds and more life in the streets than in any other town along the French Mediterranean coast.
Exactly this year, the summer of 2016, however, it is difficult to do anything other than let the pictures speech from the memorial after the fatal Bastille Day.
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- (Danish) Terroraktionen strakte sig over et par kilometer af strand-promenaden.
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- (Danish) Bamser,blomster og mindesmærke
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- (Danish) 8-årig: De mennesker er ikke venlige. De har ikke retten
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- (Danish) Et lille udsnit af mindestedet efter terroraktionen 14. juli.
Also on the promenade there are laid flowers, obituaries and toys from children
Facts: After having dwelt on the memory of the victims of the July 14 terror here are some factual sailing information: Nice is a relatively inexpensive port: 30 € per night. Slightly cheaper than Cannes: € 34 per night.
Our experience is, that if you are in the big cities, you should try to get into the old port – Vieux Port – then you get a price close to Nice and Cannes. The price rises when you go into smaller ports for instance Marina Baie des Anges between Nice and Antibes. Here you pay € 48 per night without ever getting more for your money.
Therefore: Go for Vieux Ports when you need to seek a harbour with shopping facilities, sanitary facilities and cultural activities beyond what you can get when you anchor for free in the bays.
Ronja eat cherries with the big ones. Note that now we park our boat, as we will. The bow in first – no matter what the French do and think
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- (Danish) men der er andre museer i Nice, som også er et besøg værd. Her er en Picasso fanget på det gamle Museé des Beaux Art
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- (Danish) Chagall museet er fantastisk. Gå ikke glip af det
Never take no for an answer – when it comes to a berth
43° 35′ 2.1804” N 7° 7′ 41.7288” E
26.juli 2016
Antibes is a lovely town. Manageable – with beaches, nice museums, restaurants and an unmistakable maritime character
Antibes: The woman behind the counter shakes her head: “You must understand, that what you are asking can not be considered. We do not hire out berths on monthly contracts in July and August. We only hire out one day at a time, eventually two days and then you can come and ask, if you can hire one more day. Those are the rules. ”
The woman behind the counter has an expression that lets us understand, that our request takes the prize as the month most foolish.
“It’s not the port’s berths. It is the individual owners. We can not know, when the owner comes back and want to use the berth himself. ”
The woman is sitting behind the counter at the port office in Port Vauban, Antibes’ giant port, who reportedly is Europe’s largest marina with over 1700 berths, including a billionaire pier for those boat-owners, who can not settle for two or six employees but has 40 or – in one case – even 60 crew members.
We had asked the woman, if we could rent a berth for our sailing boat Ronja for a month or more, while we were back home in Denmark. Obviously we could not. There are rules. And where we were we all, if rules are not followed?
We leave the harbour office crestfallen. We think, again we have met that French arrogance, where at least some officials have a greater need to show who is the boss, than they have an interest in finding a possible solution with the customer.
Nevertheless: We MUST be in Denmark on August 2. or 3., and we CAN at the earliest be back in the south of France on September 12 . The problem has to be solved.
We take place in Café Felix, who has an acceptable wifi and a decent white wine, and we send a flurry of e-mails to ports and shipyards along the Riviera – from Cannes in the west to Menton in the east.
We would like to have Ronja to lie in the water from August 2 to September 12. But we are desperate enough to make a comprehensive agreement for the entire winter, including getting the boat taken out of the water, if the other ports also rejects having her in the water for more than a month.
We get the fastest responses from those, that we seek out personally. Three yards/boat repair shops in Antibes each have a crane large enough to lift Ronja out of the water. All three are sincerely accommodating to our problem. One says, however, straight out that he can make more money utilising his port area to prepare and repair boats than to have our Ronja standing in hibernation. Fair enough.
Another oat repair shop offers to take Ronja on land and store her in a corner of their port area until April, eight months for the price of 7.500 €. A shipyard offering to hive Ronja on land, take the mast of her and carry her into the country, where they have a storage space. Price: 8.200 €.
Thanks. But no thanks. On these terms we will not take Ronja out of the water.
So begins the answers ticking in via the mail. The most professional ports, the four ports that are part of the organisation Riviera Ports – Cannes, Nice, Golfe-Juan and Villefranche – acknowledge immediately with a standard mail, that they have received my mail, and that they will answer the question within 48 hours.
Three of them actually do this. Nice offers to cover part of the period. Cannes and Villefrance says no but they will put us on the waiting list. We do not hear from Golfe-Juan. The same applies to six or seven other marinas. No responce at all. Not a single line.
And yet. One port answers. The most surprising of them all.
We basically had received oral refusals from Port Vauban, but when we sat down and wrote mails, we also sent Port Vauban an email.
And, big surprice! Port Vauban answers yes, they have a place to Ronja from August 2 till September 12.
Hooray for Port Vauban! The port of Antibes is back in the lead. We acknowledge with a yes to the conditions and promise to be there on August 2.
And what did we just learn here? We learned that one hand in a port office do not necessarily know what the other hand is doing. A refusal from one employee can become a happy acceptance from another. Never take no for an answer – when it comes berths.
Reflection: In the four years we’ve been sailing out into the world with Ronja, many have asked whether it is not hard to set aside our boat when we are at home in Denmark and work many months. On the contrary. It has been easy. Easy in Holland. Easy in northern France. Easy west of Marseilles. The French Riviera proved to be a little more difficult and more expensive. But anyway: Again a solution could be created in a short time.
You pay for it. In our case, we pay € 1,082 for 40 days in high season. But as I said: We just had to go back to Denmark on August 2.
Our “neighbours” in the Antibes, Yacht “Katara”, is 124 meters long, has a crew of 60 and is owned by the emir of Qatar. Price: 300 million $
There rinsed, scrubbed, rubbed and polished. Employees at billionaire yachts clean constant when the yacht is in port
Antibes is said to be the capital of the yacht industry. Here you can buy a billion-boat, get signed up as a sailor, have new uniforms for your crew 🙂
Cannes beats Saint Tropez with several lengths
43° 33′ 10.2492” N, 7° 1′ 2.5284” E
July 16, 2016
The waterfront in Cannes exudes diversity. Large boats, small boats. Here Ronja feel at home
The air is filled with helicopters over Saint Tropez and Cannes. As industrious insects they are buzzing back and forth between the cities with occasional forays out to the large yachts, each having its own helicopter pad. It seems there is especially dense morning and after-work traffic of people going to and from the job from the villa or the yacht in Saint Tropez, Cannes or Nice.
But what do we know about it? Ronja has no helicopter platform on the aft deck. On reflection has Ronja not even an aft deck. The many helicopters give a sense of business activity, but they also underline the atmosphere of exclusivity and extravagance, we have approached as we close in to Saint Tropez and Cannes. The port of Saint Tropez gave us shelter during almost three days of summer storm with up to 8 Beaufort gusts, and now we have been three days in Cannes so far.
Maybe we are just narrow-minded? But the balance between incoming luxury and the city itself seems lopsided in St. Tropez
This hiking trip you really must try. The Tourist Office advises against it. “It is too long. Better to go in a car”. But it is a unique nature experience..
Of the two cities, we prefer Cannes. There are common features between the two cities. But Cannes by far wins in comparison. Why? Because there is a nicer atmosphere in Cannes. Cannes is not as outlandish as forlorn as hysterical as Saint Tropez. It is as if, Saint Tropez is nothing in itself, but is instead defines its own value in the things it pulls from the outside – the large yachts, the numerous brand stores, the famous and the rich.
It probably has been like this for many years. After World War II when people wanted to restore the war-damaged city, Saint Tropez was aimed at cultivate a special reputation as a playground for the famous. Errol Flynn came to town, Jean Cocteau, Anaïs Nin and in 1956 also Brigitte Bardot. Thus was the special image in place.
The image is still cultivated. The cruises sail round with tourists, pointing out the villas of the celebrities. The large luxury yachts gets the room innermost in the old harbor, so we all understand that this is the real attraction of Saint Tropez – a sneak peek into the incredibly rich people’s world; tourist fathers and –sons strolling also along the quay discussing how it would be just to work at one of the huge yachts.
Things are different in Cannes. Here the city is larger and can better accommodate all extremes. Here’s also luxury yachts, but they lie at the outer pier and is just one of many elements in the city’s port. Here are also tourists, but the city’s size ensures that it remains predominantly a French town. There are also international brand stores, but they do not overshadow the many local specialist shops with cheeses, pates, bread, hardware, fruit – not to mention antique markets and the daily, quite lavish, food market, Marché Forville.
One of the beaches of Saint Tropez: Les Salins. It is located far from the city but is probably among the best we’ve seen.
Unless you just are missing a Gucci bag, shopping-conditions are also best in Cannes – among other things with a few good supermarkets close to the port. The best we saw in Saint Tropez, was a fabulously beautiful hike on a narrow cliff path around the peninsula of Saint Tropez and out to the great beaches Les Salins and Pampelonne. The trip is very long. It is possible to take small swims along the way. Take plenty of water from before going.
Vulgar? Frankly, yes. Saint Tropez lets the luxury yachts “overshadow” the city, as if visiting wealth is the city’s main attraction
Fact: A port space for Ronja in Saint Tropez: 59 € per night. A space in Cannes: € 34 per night (with better facilities). A pizza calzone in Saint Tropez 18 €. A pizza calzone in Cannes: 15 €. Saint Tropez has a small but very interesting museum of modern art. It’s called l’Annonciade and admission is € 6.
Save the port fee and go straight for the beach
43° 0′ 3.6612” N, 6° 13′ 18.0048” E
July 8, 2016
My soul, what do you want more?
Imagine it before you: A soft reclining chair under a huge, shady pine. A bottle of cold water within reach, a crime novel in hand. The distance between the chair and the azure waters is just ten meters of perfect sandy beach, and ten steps to the side is a small restaurant with a daily menu for lunch.
The place is Porquerolles. The largest of the four islands in the archipelago of Iles d’Hyeres, a short distance east of Toulon. Porquerolles is a mixture of a Caribbean island paradise, the Freetown Christiania in Copenhagen and a military barracks. The island offers simple vacation at sky-high prices.
Porquerolles city was built 100 years ago by the French military. Complete with fort, church, officer housing, barracks and exercise tracks. Today, all the buildings taken over by civilians – bicycle rental shops, ice cream vendors, vegetable grocers, ship wrights and restaurants for every budget. Taken together it has created a relaxed, alternative charm, which by mid-July has the additional of a week-long jazz festival.
The island’s focal point is the many beaches. Some have stone beach, others have the finest sand beaches. Everywhere has a sandy surface under the water, which by the way is nicely separate from the many sailors who are anchoring off the beaches. Tourists at foot and by bicycle walking the many kilometers on the way to and from the beaches. It can be a hot journey, but the ride is greatly mitigated by the enchanting aroma of dry pine needles and fresh saltwater.
Plage de Notre Dame is reputed to be the most beautiful of the beaches. Plage de la Courtade is closer to the city. We, however, prefer Plage d’Argent the most – for it is the only one that has its own restaurant, decent toilets and hire of sunbeds.
Facts: Porquerolles is ridiculously expensive. Supply and demand are out of balance. An overnight stay in the harbor, which has few and poor facilities cost 50 € for Ronjas 11 meters, where we are used to paying € 35 per night. A lunch menu at the restaurant cost € 24 for a single right where we are used to get both two and three lunches for € 19 in other ports. The baker is expensive. The supermarket is expensive. Everything is expensive.
A word of advice: Save the port dues and use the island’s many bays for overnight. Bring your own supplies.
Plage Notre Dame. Isolated beauty – without restaurant
The pine tree is a beautiful tree. Both its shade, its odor and its dryness
Skippers wife heading to Plage Notre Dame
Cities must have a soul – otherwise we sail on and find a better one
43° 7′ 14.82″ N, 5° 48′ 15.79″ E
July 7, 2016
Frenchmen have difficulty with the name of our boat, “Ronja”. In Sanary-sur-mer, we have previously signed up via cell phone, but when we enter the harbour master’s office, there is no recognition, when I spell “Ronja”. The person who accepted our call on the phone, had written our name as “Oneyeah”.
Knowledge of Astrid Lindgren’s writing in general and “Ronja Røverdatter” specifically is not deep in southern France.
Sanary-sur-mer is a very fine acquaintance. It is the neighboring city to the more famous city, Bandol. But we fancy ourselves that it is a more interesting city. It’s beautiful in the Provence-way with beige, ocher, white, dusty buildings interspersed with harsh green or blue shutters on the windows. The city has fishing boats, daily fish market, beautiful scenery, very few brand-shops and an excellent beach. There is such a little “People and robbers in Cardamom Town” (norwegian story) over it. With the tower and all.
The city has soul. One senses that here is life, even when the tourists have gone home. The city has cultural, architectural, historical, commercial and landscape values, that do not cave in during periods when only the permanent residents are here.
This need – that a city should have an independent soul – is no given thing in these parts. Some days later we call Cavaliere sur-mer. Fine port, good facilities, everything is neat. But the Cavaliere-sur-mer is obviously a city, that lives and breathes with tourism and not so much else. Close to the port is build a brand new entertainment district consisting of 20-30 restaurants and nightclubs plus a single carousel. The party goes on late into the night, but it’s hard to imagine the city as more than a ghost town, when beach tourists have gone home.
Do we sound as if we are sour having moored Ronja in the middle of a flashing disco? Well, it may be right.
Old fishing boats shining in the harbour
Sanarys harbour bubbles of colours and vitality…
…therefore you get an extra picture from the harbour
Paradise on Earth – Calanque de Port-Miou
43° 12′ 20.16″ N, 5° 30′ 55.01″ E
July 5, 2016
Until this day we had no idea, what a calanque was. We know that now. And we are excited. A calanque is a bay or – in the most exciting form – a narrow and deep fjord that cuts into a rocky 
landscape, so the sides are almost vertical and can be up to 100 meters high.
When you’re inside such a calanque, it feels a bit like sailing in a cathedral. Devoutly we look up and on the steep rock faces, enjoying the scent of pine trees and listening to the cicadas anthem. We sailed into them all, right from the first appeared a few miles after Marseille.
After checking all of them, we chose to settle down in – we think – the very most charming: Calangue de Port-Miou. Some calanques are boring, not much more than a wide cove with a blunt beach at the bottom. But the closer we get to the town of Cassis, the calanques are deeper and more characterful. First Sormiou, then Morgiou and later Calanque d’En Vau and Calanque de Port Pin. They are in their own way exciting. But none can compare with Calanque de Port-Miou.
At first glance it seems, that Port-Miou is just larger than the others with more places for mooring boats – with an anchor bend at one end and a rope wrapped around a rocky outcrop or, at best, a ring at the other end. But it is only at first glance.
Pout-Miou has a kind of anteroom, where there is room for 20-30 boats, and where there is a daily cruises from major cities nearby, where guides tell tourists about the calanques. But the trick is to proceed. Even into the bottom of the front room, for here is revealed 
another room, much narrower, much longer, almost one kilometer long. On either side of this narrow space, there is built a “catwalk”, a slender wooden bridge, on both sides. And here hundreds of locals have their permanent mooring. As in a secret inner compartment.
When we call the harbour master on channel 09 and ask for a berth, he refers us to the anteroom. We have no desire to go there. “We can see that there are berths available along the wooden bridges,” we insist. An inflatable boat shows up and we get assigned a berth. A wonderful place.
It is a small paradise. The water in the narrow canyon’s cold and clean and perfect to cool the body under the relentless sun. It is quiet. Not a sound from the tour boats in the front room. Only the cicadas. Occasionally a few kayakers or a single French man working on his boat.
A hidden port, a small paradise
Fact: It is primitive. But Frenchmen has an understanding for the value of beauty, so the price for an overnight stay in Port-Miou is the same as in Marseille, just over 35 €. And this is without electricity, far to the water connection and a 10 minute walk to the bathroom on the other side of the divide. Shopping is a 25-minute walk from Port-Miou in the town of Cassis. However, there are both bus and mini train, for those who do not bother walking.
The anteroom. More noisy. Not at all quiet