St. Tropez the beautiful
Trip Start
Apr 30, 2004
1
22
34
Trip End
May 09, 2004
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St-Tropez,
France
Thursday, May 6, 2004
According to the records, there are about 5,700 permanent residents in St. Tropez, with 100,000 day trippers in the summer. We are fortunate to see it in relative calm. It is a sunny day, not too many people and we find it charming. St-Tropez was originally a small walled fishing village. The light, bright colours attracted the impressionists, namely Paul Signac. But it was Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim's 1956 film "And God Created Woman" in which a new sex symbol reared her pretty pouting head that put St Tropez on the map and brought French Films out of the arthouse ghetto. Brigitte still resides in St-Tropez off and on, and can occasionally be seen collecting donations outside the tourist office for her influential international wildlife foundation
http://www.imzadi.nl/Rwwp4/bb_main.html. http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0000003/
01. St-Tropez. Where is Brigitte?
.The harbour is packed with all types of vessels, from huge luxurious yachts to humble fishing crafts and dinghies. We walk around the harbour and enter the town through a narrow gateway. As with most of the villages we have seen, no vehicular traffic is allowed in the narrow cobbled lanes, so one can wander at will past the historic buildings now principally converted to boutiques, souvenir shops and restaurants, all very tasteful of course. We ascend the hillside to the Citadel for lovely views over the pastel coloured village and blue Mediterranean, a truly lovely sight. After a light snack of pastries, quiche and coffee, we return to the car park and join the slow line of traffic exiting. We have hit the 5:00 pm rush hour. It seems that most people who work in St-Tropez live elsewhere and we join the homeward commute back towards Ste-Maxime.
Halfway to Ste-Maxime at Port Grimaud, we are supposed to turn off onto D558, but somehow miss the turning. We are almost back in Ste. Maxime still in the rush hour pack, when I see St-Tropez across the bay. At this moment I know we have missed D558, so we double back. Eventually I find I had taken the wrong turn on a gigantic roundabout halfway between St-Tropez and Ste-Maxime. This lost us about 30 minutes, something we could ill afford as we are running way behind schedule.
