An Hour at the Carlton – Cannes

A few days ago, I found myself at the Carlton in Cannes—not residing there, merely calling in to meet a friend. It was the 17th of May, the Cannes Film Festival at its peak, and the hotel exuded that particular kind of splendour only the Riviera knows—gracious, composed, and impossibly elegant.

We sat in the bar beneath soaring windows, where the afternoon light filtered through like silk. Around us moved a quiet procession of the world’s well-dressed and well-connected—stylists, producers, actors, patrons of the arts—each carrying themselves with the ease of those accustomed to being seen. The mood was hushed yet alive, a low murmur of cultured conversation in French, Italian, English, the occasional polished laugh.

I ordered a Negroni—simple, correct, and confidently made. It arrived with a curl of orange peel and a slice of blood orange resting against the glass like stained glass in the late sun. As we spoke, I found myself watching the room, as if it were a slow scene in an old film—observing, not intruding.

I wasn’t staying the night, but I didn’t need to. For that one unhurried hour, time expanded in the way it does only in places that know the value of stillness and beauty. There was no performance, only presence.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust