Flamands 2008

barry_h

New Member
I took this photo when I was a teenager and staying on Flamands in summer of 2008. I want to know if anybody remembers the name of this hotel at the end of the beach.

I have memories of grandiose rumors of the hotel's owner. It was endlessly discussed by my parents over dinner all those years. But the vibrant colored roofs and endless terraces of new buildings blossoming from the Earth every summer always captivated me.

I imagined him wearing Gucci loafers with no socks, and wreaking of onions. Maybe he lit his cigarettes with an S.T. Dupont lighter and wore gold chains.

They terrified my friends and I from going to investigate the sprawling and increasingly byzantine structure with rumors of the owner's alleged connections. They told us there were lasers that would activate and alert the gendarmerie. It was always a ghost town. We never listened to them.

When I was last on Flamands in 2024, it seemed the complex had been fully consumed by Cheval Blanc. While the many colored terraces and their pyramid roofs that once animated the rocks have been swallowed by the investment of the barefoot rhythm of the French West Indies, I remember the imaginary Frenchman and his palace. The palace that never stopped expanding.


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Looks lovely. What was it like? I assume the reason it always looked like a ghost town to us is that it closed during the summer season. My family would only take us during the off seasons every summer, so I never got to witness it in full occupancy, leading to the legends fabricated by my parents and their friends to run wild across our minds.
 
Mostly before our time (we did have a drink there once), but GREAT stories about Taiwana and the owner in Michael Gross's book - Treasured Island. "The owner I'm sure was probably a normal person..." quite the opposite from what I read.
 
Mostly before our time (we did have a drink there once), but GREAT stories about Taiwana and the owner in Michael Gross's book - Treasured Island. "The owner I'm sure was probably a normal person..." quite the opposite from what I read.
Picking up this book before my next return. Is there much in the book regarding the Rockefeller estate on Colombier?
 
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