Today was our last day with the car, so we took advantage of one more day of wheels and took a trip out of Nice. We went to St. Tropez. Yes, Larry and Margaret on the Riviera at St. Tropez! Who would have ever thought.
We took the highway down since we had already covered most of the coastline on our trip over to Nice. The highway, like most highways everywhere is fairly boring to drive, but it does have the advantage of speed. I have never mastered the idea of driving at 130 km/hr. It just seems too fast to go, plus our 4-cylinder car had a hard time getting up to 100. I called it the "Little Engine that Could" (I think I can, I think I can, etc). Okay, that children's book probably hasn't been published since I turned five or so, and no one except Larry understands the "literary reference".
Anyway, we got off the highway to drive along part of the coastline that we had not covered before. It was fairly flat and formed a huge half-moon around the bay. On the map, it looks like a tear open in the land, like the peninsula where St. Tropez is located was just ripped away. But when driving, it looks much more poetically like a half-moon. That is as poetic as it gets, for otherwise the towns that line the bay are non-descript, not pleasing to the eye, and reminded both of us of the not so wonderful parts of the Jersey shore.
After quite a lot of driving, we reached our destination and found the town parking lot, at 2.50 Euros/hr. That seemed a bit stiff to me. The lowest price "menu" in St.Tropez was about 20 Euros, which is about $25 give or take, plus wine and coffee, just for lunch. The prices went up from there. If the places had looked desirable and the food looked really good, we might have spent the money, but all in all, it was overpriced and undervalued. The restaurants charged a lot of money simply because they could.
This town was apparently a sleepy medieval fishing town until Brigitte Bardot made it famous in a movie about 40 years ago. The town continues to pay homage to her by putting her image on just about anything that will take it -- posters, mugs, tee-shirts, etc.
We spent quite a bit of time walking around the town, particularly through the old town. By now old towns have become quite familiar to us in their general appearance and layout. This one varied only in the prices of the stores. All of the stores found on 5th or Madison Avenue in Manhattan were here. Big names, tiny stores -- just big enough to say that they have a store in St Tropez.
Here are some pictures of the town, which is to say the old town.
The harbor was full of $3M+ yachts, of course. The moorage fee, Larry read, is $2,000 a day. The one that I liked the best was grand and shaped somewhat like an old-time ocean liner. I suppose that that type of yacht is probably terribly out of fashion, but compared to the super sleek and (to my mind) totally charmless modern yachts of today, it was lovely. It was also the largest boat in the marina and had to be moored outside of the regular slips.
There was a 1938 wooden boat there that had a distinctively broad-beamed look about it that was being filmed for something. We guessed that it was maybe for advertising purposes since it didn't appear that the filming had anything to do with any personalities. Here's a picture of what they were filming:
After a couple of hours, we retrieved our car from the lot and left town. All I can say about St. Tropez is that we were not impressed. Maybe it was because it was so very off-season and the skies were a bit gray. Instead of being filled with super slim, tall model wanna-be's, it was populated by people looking a bit more like us, except speaking German and wearing wool socks with their Birkenstocks. Not only did I not feel socially intimidated and really inappropriately dressed, I unfortunately felt as comfortable there as anywhere. So much for the rich and famous.
I was glad that we went there because I would have always wondered what it is like, but now that I have been, I can simply check it off the list and not bother to return. To my mind, Cassis was much more interesting. I would go back there again. Here's Larry at his favorite pastime here in France.
We stopped to get some lunch along the way and found one of the many free parking areas along the coastline, facing the sea. Here's Larry "enjoying" lunch:
We took the highway for most of the way back and got off at a town called Cagnes to see Renoir's house and gardens. The old olive trees must have been the ones that he had planted, for their trunks were so knarled and aged.
For Renoir fans, this was a very special place. It was amazing to stand in his studio and see his studio as he saw it. His house does not get nearly as much tourist attention as Monet's Giverny, but it was every bit as interesting (to us anyway). Non-Renoir fans would do well to skip this, but it was the best part of our day.
Here is his house and a separate studio used by other artists who visited him.
Renoir is getting a bit of attention this year with the exhibit of his late work (work mostly completed while living at this house) is on display now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and later to travel. We went to the exhibit in August when we were back in New Jersey for a few weeks.
As we entered Nice again, we came first to the airport where we turned in the car. I was greatly relieved that they did not go over it with a microscope and find all of the scrapes incurred when we were navigating through those alleyways in the hill towns.
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