6 Days, Captivating Cote DU0027azur

The airport for Puerto La Cruz in northeast on the Caribbean. Isla de Margarita is off the coast.

The French Riviera is synonymous with beaches, splendid scenery and fascinating people, and nowhere is this more evident than in Cannes. Artists, writers, actors and jet-setters from the world over come here to enjoy the elegant boutiques, art galleries, extravagant restaurants and hotels along the Cote d’Azur.

And of course, the annual Cannes Film Festival draws the creme de la creme of trendsetting celebrities. Nearby is the town of Grasse, known for its fields of fragrant blossoms and perfume factory, and further along is St. Paul-de-Vence, a fortified medieval town perched high atop a hill. It was here that painter Marc Chagall lived and was inspired to create many of his Expressionist masterpieces.

France’s second city and a major seaport, Marseille is an important industrial center and produces many food products. It is the oldest French town, settled by Phonecians, Greeks and annexed by Rome in 49 B.C. During the Crusades, Marseilles was a commercial center and transit port for the Holy Land. Taken by Charles I of Anjou, it was absorbed by Provence and bequeathed to the French crown in 1481. It grew as a port in the 19th century, with the opening of the Suez Canal and the conquest of Algeria. It is known for its great avenue, the Canebière, and for the Chateau d’If, a castle in its harbor.

Today Marseille is France’s largest port and is as warm as the sun on the south of France. An ethnic stew of French, Arabic, and Italian cultures, Marseille’s slightly risque charm appeals to those who love the spice of a real melting pot. Nearby is the gracious Aix-en-Province. At the home and studio of Paul Cezanne, you can revisit the birth of impressionism exactly a century ago.

Rome wasn’t built in a day…but you can tour it in just over 10 hours. A teeming anthill of humanity and antiquity intermingled with awful traffic jams, Rome grew up on the Tiber (“Fiume Tevere”) among seven low hills that rise from the river’s soggy eastern banks. It’s a city of many peeling layers of history, of which the bottom layer–that of the earliest Roman centuries–is the most interesting and still astonishingly whole. The hub of this layer is the Palatine Hill, the Forum, the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus.

On the western bank is the Citta Vaticana, the independent papal city where the Pope blesses pilgrims from all over the world. Neighboring Trastevere (“Across the Tiber”) is a mix of Roman, Greek and Jewish subcultures, great for little restaurants and nightlife. Further north on the other bank is “vecchia Roma,” medieval Rome of the Pantheon and Piazza Navona; Renaissance Rome is centered south of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Commercial Rome is the city of the Via del Corso, the Piazza del Popolo, the controversial Victor Emmanuel monument and finally the Stazione Termini, the nexus for all trains and roads from Rome.

Come back to Sorrento and “O sole mio” are probably two of the most famous songs in the world. Amidst the colour and noise of all the small towns fringing the Bay of Naples, Sorrento is a haven of peace and quiet with its orange groves and in its associations with history and art. This small town is built on a cliff top that plummets down into the limpid blue sea and looks across to Capri. Torquato Tasso was born here, and the Tarantella is danced here as nowhere else. The Correale Museum is well worth a visit: it is beautifully situated and has a rich collection of furniture, paintings and porcelains.