Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc
Antibes, France
The Riviera fantasy that Fitzgerald wrote and Hollywood never stopped booking.
F. Scott Fitzgerald set Tender Is the Night here, thinly disguised as the Hôtel des Étrangers, and the place has been trading on that mythology, and living up to it, ever since. During the Cannes festival it fills with a wattage of celebrity that leaves the paparazzi weeping at the gates.
For decades it famously refused all credit cards, a policy that filtered its clientele more effectively than any velvet rope. The pool, carved out of the white rock above the sea, is still one of the most beautiful man-made things on the whole coast.
The Verdict
It's absurdly expensive and gloriously unbothered about it. This is the Riviera as it lives in the imagination, and somehow the reality still delivers.
A negroni on the Eden-Roc terrace at the exact hour the Mediterranean turns from turquoise to ink, cicadas roaring in the pines behind you.
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