June is the month the Riviera keeps for itself: the sea already warm, the evenings long, the crowds still three weeks away. What follows is one family’s week, real and retold with its guest’s blessing, completed by the notes other June guests leave us. The house is Maison Marina — a private entrance directly on the ramparts walk, four sea-view windows, and a south-facing terrace suspended above the Mediterranean.
Someone is waiting in front of the house — Maggy and Henri live two streets away, so the doorstep welcome and the tour come with the keys: how the shutters work, where everything lives, the terrace kept for last. Maison Marina opens straight onto the ramparts walk; below the south terrace, the evening swimmers are still in the water at eight.
In June the light refuses to end. Dinner happens on the terrace because nobody votes for inside.
The run starts at the front door, which is the whole point of the house: along the sea wall, down past the Gravette, around Port Vauban towards Fort Carré and back before the day warms up. Home by way of Veziano — the baker of the princely wedding of Monaco, fifty metres off the route — for fresh croissants and a warm pain de Corrèze.
Breakfast on the terrace, still in running shoes. The routine took exactly one day to install.
The Marché Provençal in June is the old town showing off: strawberries and first figs from the hinterland, tomatoes that taste of something, flowers at the far end, socca if you time it right. It is minutes from the house, so you shop like residents — a little, daily.
Half of what we bought never made it to a recipe. It was eaten on the terrace, as is.
Riviera Pilates, the studio beneath the canopy of the Provençal Market, is Maggy’s — the same Maggy who handed over the keys. A private session, booked the evening before, turned out to be the best possible answer to a week of long dinners: done by half past nine, home across the market with the shopping.
Our wellness partnershipTen minutes away in Juan-les-Pins, the Hôtel Belles Rives was Fitzgerald’s villa before it was a hotel, and its private beach still behaves like the 1920s never ended: a bed under a parasol, lunch with your feet practically in the water, a boy who refused to leave the sea for six hours.
The beaches of AntibesThe grand table of the week: Louroc, the Michelin-starred restaurant of the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, at the tip of the Cap d’Antibes. Henri booked it the way locals do, and the lunch unfolds exactly as the legend promises — white parasols, the sea on three sides, no reason on earth to hurry. Back at the house by four, straight onto the terrace for a nap.
Out of Port Vauban in the morning, round the Cap d’Antibes, across the bay and along the coast to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat: a swim stop at anchor, lunch in the port, and the slow ride home with the whole Riviera in profile. The day the week gets measured against.
Alexandre — Maggy and Henri’s son — came to the house for the evening so that, for once, dinner was just the two of us: La Taille de Guêpe, the local favourite where the plates arrive strewn with flowers. A starred lunch is a memory; a babysitter who is part of the family that hosts you is a reason to come back.
Eating well in Old AntibesThe Gravette, tucked beneath the ramparts, is where the old town swims after work — and in June the water is already worth it. Towel over the shoulder, three minutes from the front door, floating below the walls you ran along that morning. Home before the hair dries.
Henri had already booked our restaurant tables and argued us onto a boat; the coffee was to talk about Antibes itself — the old town in summer, which streets stay cool, what changes when July arrives, and what does not change at all. It ended, as these coffees apparently do, with a calendar out.
Meet your hostsA last run, a last bag of croissants, sand still in the beach shoes by the door. June gives you the Riviera at its most generous and asks for nothing back except that you return — which, calendar out on day six, we already had.
Seven restored houses inside the old town — live availability, transparent prices, and your hosts two streets away.
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