The Ruination of the French Riviera

Taki Theodoracopulos, writing in the American Conservative, tells readers, “The ruination of the French Riviera by greedy developers and vulgar nouveaux riches is a body blow very hard to recover from. I invested 35 summers, and I hate to think the amount of money and now I have nothing to show for it but a distant memory of an F. Scott Fitzgerald period. And even sailing near the place is no good. Hundreds of mega-stink pots owned by Arabs and Russians now cruise around the French coast, all loaded with extremely annoying jet skis that buzz around one’s boat 24/7.”

Debbie and I not long ago spent some time on the French Riviera, including time in Monaco. We can certainly support Taki’s view and were told often just how much the French hotel industry on the coast despise the crude nouveaux Russian crowd to the point hotel employees would almost like to see a closing in February to duck the despised Russian tourists.

Taki offers the alternative:

So, where do American Conservative readers go this summer? If I lived in the American northeast I’d go to Maine. You might get chewed up by mosquitoes and be lectured by left-wing matrons wearing sandals, but what the heck, it beats having Russians propositioning your teenage daughter and offering her expensive jewels. But if you’d like to see a bit of the old world, come to—where else?—where it all began, Hellas herself.

Fly into Athens and go straight to some ferryboat that will take you to the islands. Do not go to Mykonos unless you are gay, smoke pot nonstop, and have lots of penicillin with you. Do not go to Spetses, the Greeks there derive from Albania and are rude and talk bullshit. Go to Paros and Antiparos, on the Aegean side, or try where Taki comes from, the Ionian islands of Corfu, Cephalonia, Paxos and Antipaxos, Ithaka, and Zakynthos. The waters are to die for, the people friendly and educated due to never having been under the Turkish yoke, only under the Venetians and the Brits. Charter a small boat and sail it yourself.

And if you see me on my sailboat, shout “TAC.” I’ll have you come on board for a drink. Have a good summer.