Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc

 Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc Luxury hotels worldwide like to notch up a Hollywood A-lister or two in their visitors' book and many can claim the odd actor or footballer has graced their junior suites - but they'd all do well to avoid a name dropping contest with the big beast of the French Riviera, the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc.
In Tender Is The Night, F Scott Fitzgerald, a frequent guest, modelled the Hotel des Etrangers on the Hotel du Cap, writing, the 'large, proud, rose coloured hotel... has become a summer resort of notable, fashionable people'.
In real life, Marlene Dietrich and her entourage summered (yes, that is a euphemism) here with the Kennedy clan, while Pablo Picasso and Gary Cooper set up a shooting gallery in the gardens.
Sharon Stone once ordered a harpist in traditional Irish dress along with a Nebuchadnezzar of champagne and Paris Hilton exposed her derrière to any Hollywood stars who hadn't seen it already at a Vanity Fair party here Cannes film festival.
The Windsors, Clintons, Bushes, Mitterrands and Berlusconis have all been regulars. It seems as ubiquitous for royal and political dynasties as a sex scandal to have stayed at the Hotel du Cap.
But it's not trading on past glories - no whiff of faded grandeur here.
We arrive as the hotel has undergone a four-year, €40m renovation. Yet Philippe Perd, the general manager, is keen to tell us how the project has not interfered with the soul of the place. The flat screens and iPod players newly installed in the sumptuous suites don't sound revolutionary until you realise that not only were televisions banned, this hotel didn't even accept credit cards until 2005.
First-time guests, the story goes, had to come with a letter of recommendation from their bank, either that presumably or Louis Vuitton trunks filled with Francs. It's crucial to book well in advance - even Brad and Angelina were turned away during one film festival.
The main hotel, a grand Napoleon III château, was built in 1870 by the founder of Le Figaro newspaper. It sits in plum position on the southern tip of the Cap d'Antibes in 22 acres of pine trees and tropical gardens.
On arrival, the art works and tapestries are all eclipsed by the glimpse of sea that leads you straight through the reception and out the revolving doors on to the vast stone steps. There, a boulevard cuts through the trees leading down to the rocky shoreline and the twinkling Mediterranean.
The swimming pool itself is quite extraordinary. Dynamited out of the basalt above the bay in 1914, today it's a salt water infinity pool, cut into the edge of the cliff. Above it sits the Eden-Roc pavilion, the only part of the hotel open to non residents. It has the nautical feel of an art deco cruise liner with two terraces of restaurants overhanging the sea and spectacular views along the Côte D'Azur.
A diving board, hoops, ladder and trapeze are suspended over the sea and, it would seem, also in time. The sight is so Thirties I can almost see the Kennedy boys whooping and grinning as they show off in those long summers between the wars.
But despite the location, architecture and reputation of the Hotel du Cap, it may be the staff that are its greatest asset. Even to unknowns like us they were utterly charming and warm, laughing with me when I asked incredulously if wolf is on the menu (loup, I learn, means both sea bass AND wolf in French).
Tales abound of the sybaritic tendencies of guests being played out here on lazy summer afternoons. We limited ourselves to swimming from the rocks and eating an exquisite lunch while watching the neon spinnakers of day sailors and the sleek super-yachts of oligarchs rounding the tip of the cap.
By night, the owners of those yachts and their guests come to dine. Launches ferry effortlessly chic couples to the hotel's teak dock while white uniformed crew carry their evening clothes ashore.
Minutes later, they emerge into the restaurant looking impossibly glamorous. I was so mesmerised I scarcely remember what I ate.
Lorenzo, the maître d'hotel, told us the perfect combination for a holiday on the Cote d'Azur is to spend a week in St Tropez partying hard, a week in the Eden-Roc and then a week to recuperate up in the mountains in the sister hotel Château Saint-Martin, after which you are ready to do it all again.
Much as I might aspire to a life of indolent hedonism, we had instead just three days. We did spend the first night in the Chateau Saint-Martin. A short drive from Nice airport up into the hills towards Provence, it feels a million miles from the summer madness of the Riviera.
It's been a vantage point for viewing the coast since Roman times.
The Knights Templar used it as a base for R&R between crusades, and the ruins of a 10th century Templar castle are in the grounds. The Château is a bastion of good taste and relaxation with a spa for the stressed out socialite. In the gardens rambling roses climb over olive trees and pretty paths flanked with beds of rosemary and lavender lead to terraces overlooking the faraway coast.
Food is a serious business anywhere in France but here it's an art form, and the chef, Yannick Franques, has earned two Michelin stars in two years.
On its own the Château would make a glorious weekend treat, combined with Hotel du Cap it's an experience you're unlikely to forget.
A stay in either of these hotels will assure you that, for a price, it is still possible to indulge in the timeless appeal of a Côte D'Azur still very much in its heyday.