Friday 23 May 2014

It's amazing what a bit of sunshine can do! Awoke to a bright and already warm day, set to move on but a quick check of the forecast said that this was here to stay for a couple of days, so we reviewed our plans.

And decided to book in for a couple more nights. In the end this was decided because our plans included Cannes, where the Film Festival is running and Monaco, where the GP is on this weekend! So instead we did a little shopping in the on-site supermarket then caught the bus to St Tropez.

We don't know what we were expecting but it wasn't quite what we found. The guidebooks would have you believe that it is full of the "beautiful people" shopping for expensive trinkets and their expensive yachts filled the harbour. Well the latter was almost right, there was some beautiful machinery tied up there. But the rest?

Water-skiing anyone?

Want, want, want, want....Bet he can get BBC1

What we actually found was a charming old port village around an old harbour, that went slowly back up the hill towards the Citadel, constructed centuries ago as part of the coastal defences against the Spanish. Yes, there were a lot of people around but we didn't have to go far to lose them.

Restaurants surrounding the harbour

The original "port"

Hotel de Ville

One of the pretty narrow back streets

Peaceful squares behind the facade

The Old Port from the Citadel

We wandered round for a couple of hours, fortified by ice-creams - at €5 each! - and delicious bagettes. Entrance to the Citadel was by payment but didn't contain anything we particularly wanted to see so we took our piccies then wandered back down to the town.

A street of "expensive shops"

Says it all

We found a couple of back streets, lined with small retailers - we can only guess if these were the "expensive shops", there were no prices.......

Eventually we found our way back to the bus station with the next one waiting so boarded for the half-hour trip back. St Tropez is obviously much larger than what we had seen and our guide book suggested that there were more associated village suburbs further out along the peninsular, but it was far too warm to venture there without transport. We were well satisfied with what we had discovered.

Our campsite bordered the village of Port Grimaud so we left the bus there to have a look-see. It appears to be a fairly recently created walled community with apartments and some shops around a marina. Being quite late on, we just stopped for ice-creams - not quite so dear this time - before finding our way back to Bertie along the beach.

After a refreshing drink, Terry decided it was time to cool off in the Med - lovely! - before showers and a nice relaxing evening again. We were pleased we had decided to stay.