We spent Friday in St Tropez, after our excursion last night getting up at a decent hour wasn’t an easy thing to do! We had coffee/tea, pain au chocolat & orange juice at a nice little café across from our hotel entrance at a real bargain – 4.50 euro for all of it. From there we jumped into the car and prayed to find our way out of Nice and to St Tropez – Shan drove and it was less worrisome – she reads signs and understood where we were going so after I figured out I wasn’t navigating for Trav all went well. We took the autoroute to get there a bit faster, then through Frejus to St Tropez. The autoroute wasn’t bad and we enjoyed the scenic drive from Fejus through Ste Maxime and to St Tropez.
Once there we found some parking and headed to the sea to have some lunch – I know seems like we just ate breakfast, and so it goes on this vacation. We walked all along the port shops, found some cute shoes, but zut alor not in our size. Finally agreed on a place for lunch that was a good price and most importantly for me had moules frites (sorry Drew, Huey and whoever else can’t understand my bits of French, that is mussels and fries)! It was a nice lunch ended with ice cream – YUMMY – and we only had one drink since we had to drive back, saving our livers a bit for the first time this trip.
We walked along the shore to find the “famous white sand beaches of St Tropez” – well, first the sand isn’t white, second the ones near town are small, I mean really SMALL, needless to say Shan was a bit disappointed. There was another cool cemetery right along the sea, not a bad place for a final resting spot if you are into the water and being buried. We climbed a small hiking trail up to the Citadel in St Tropez – nice views and pretty flowers from there!
Finally it was pushing 6 PM so we headed back – in bumper to bumper traffic (can’t imagine the summer time) – jumping on the autoroute again (not our plan, but couldn’t take the traffic) and back to Nice. We arrived at our hotel close to 8 pm and decided sandwiches or crepes to go (a emporter) would be a nice change from a long dinner and would allow us to get packed for our morning departure.
All in all our stay at Hotel Rex (70 euro/night for a triple) in Nice was lovely. The owner, Michel, and his son, Peter, were super nice and spoke slowly to me in French so I could practice, while with them I tried to communicate only in French and I think I am getting better, they just talk so damn fast here! Our room was smallish, but very clean, and a bit noisy. The walls are pretty thin. The only thing making us crazy was the porn pigeon outside our window. Porn, because the first night I heard it I thought it was people next door “having relations” and I hoped it would be over soon. As it continued hour after hour in the wee morning hours I realized what it was, but it didn’t change the first impression. Do pigeons have heats? Sandy originally thought a weird alley derelict was hanging outside our window, she then wanted a slingshot to take care of it, but alas we had nothing! Unfortunately I was once again moving to fast and forgot to take pictures of Michel and Peter – total bummer – but they will remain in my memory for some time to come for their very kind hospitality!
