Travel Stories
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Monte Carlo to Sanremo
Tennis, the sea and the case for time away.
Some trips are planned around work. This one was planned around tennis.
Every April the Monte-Carlo Masters is played on red clay cut into the hillside above the Mediterranean. I went to watch, and to slow down.
Monaco is a study in contrasts: the Belle Époque flourish of the casino and its gardens, and the white lines of the new quarter at the water’s edge. Old and new, side by side.
There is a particular pleasure in watching a game you love played at its best. The rhythm of a rally. The hush before a serve. Clay swept smooth, then marked again.
On the practice courts
Match day at the Country Club
Under the awning, Sanremo
Red clay, Sanremo
Then along the coast to Sanremo. A quiet club, where the courts were red, the morning was still and there was nowhere else to be.
The hotel was a grand old one: a marble stair, painted ceilings, a terrace of palms.
A good club is about more than its courts. It is the terraces, the rituals, the conversations between matches. A place made for lingering.
First light over Sanremo
The balcony, the palms, the sea
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Time away is part of the work.
Photography
Kim Lambert
We spend so much of our lives being busy. It is the time given to what we love that sharpens the eye: for proportion, for rhythm, for the pleasure of a thing done well.
The Riviera, between sets.