Cheap Cannes Holidays

Think Cannes, think movies and film stars, expensive boutiques, palatial hotels and paparazzi. After all, it is one of the world's most chic resorts - the 'queen of the coast', 'pearl of the Riviera' - twinned with Beverly Hills and, within France, second only to Paris for shopping and major international cultural and business events, including the world-famous Cannes International Film Festival.

With so much glitz and glamour, it's easy to forget Cannes' humble origins as a simple fishing village, named after the canes and reeds of the surrounding marshes, since transformed into luxury yacht havens. In the 1920s, Cannes adopted a rhyme: 'Menton's dowdy, Monte's brass, Nice is rowdy, Cannes is class!'. However, it wasn't until the 1930s that Cannes became a summer resort, made fashionable by visitng Americans, including Zelda Fitzgerald.

Admittedly Cannes lacks the great museums, galleries and monuments of other large resorts or towns, but there is always plenty to do, with its casinos, fairs, beaches, boat trips to the Îles de Lerins, and its luxury shopping boutiques which flank the waterfront and the main shopping street, rue d'Antibes.