Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald made this their summer base in the 1920s, when the idea of visiting the Riviera in summer — rather than winter — was still considered eccentric. Fitzgerald immortalised the hotel and its pool (carved into the rocks at the water's edge) in Tender Is the Night, and it has been the unofficial clubhouse of the international jet set ever since. During the Cannes Film Festival, the hotel becomes effectively impossible to book unless you are a studio head or a person of similar consequence. Opened in 1870, with 117 rooms set in a park of Mediterranean pines, the legendary Eden-Roc restaurant on the water, and a policy of accepting no credit cards — cash or bank transfer only.