Grasse and Saint Tropez

After our adventure driving in to Italy, and driving to Nice the day before, we decided to spend less time in the car and stay a bit closer to home for a couple of days. We looked at the nearby towns, and decided it would be fun to check out the charming hillside town of Grasse.

Grasse is known for their perfume, which Carey wanted to get as a Christmas gift for her nieces. It dripped a bit on us, but never really rained enough to justify the umbrella we were carrying. I love the narrow cobblestone streets, with little art galleries, perfumeries, restaurants, and boutiques. What I didn’t really see much of is t-shirt shops. I kind of wanted a t-shirt from a little, out of the way town that only people in the know would recognize. A Grasse or Mougins t-shirt would have fit the bill perfectly, but I never saw one.

We had a minor fender bender on our way out, when a woman rear-ended us at the stop sign down the street from our time share. Thankfully she barely tapped us, and we could see no damage. I wasn’t too worried, because I had collision insurance through my travel insurance, and again through my credit card. So we took some pictures in case we needed them, and then off we went.

We started out with a delicious lunch, where I considered getting a steak before Carey warned me that it was horse meat. I decided on pasta with shrimp instead, while Carey had a filet (beef). After that we went to a little grocery store, where we stocked up on cheese for our dinner, and Carey finally found some Epsom salts – she had been wanting them to soak our feet, we were doing so much walking. Then we drove into the old village part of Grasse. It was fun walking along the cobbled streets, buying perfume, people watching, and exploring. Here are a few more pictures.

One of the things we wanted to do on our trip was to take a boat tour and see the coastline from the water. We found a day cruise from Cannes to Saint Tropez, and so the next day, we ventured south to Cannes. It was much closer than we expected, and unlike the first day we were there, it was EASY to park and get around. Partially this is because the big yacht festival that was there on Sunday was gone, and partially it was pretty early in the morning. The cruise to Saint Tropez was beautiful and took a bit over an hour. We had great seats and did not get sunburned, though I did have to buy a hairbrush once in Saint Tropez, because it was WINDY on the boat.

Once there, we set out to find lunch. We started off at a place Carey found on her phone, very elegant and highly rated, but we failed to look at the menu beforehand. One belief that I have is that if you are in France on vacation, you really shouldn’t worry too much about the cost of things that you really want to do. You don’t want to have regrets when you come home. But at the same time, we didn’t want to spend an arm and a leg for something that we didn’t REALLY want. So once we were seated and had asked for water, we perused the menu, and decided that perhaps this wasn’t for us. There was a $30 chicken sandwich I could have ordered if Carey really wanted to stay, but she couldn’t find anything that appealed to her other than an $80 lobster salad. So we drank our $14 bottle of still water, and then left to find something else.

The place we found was much more casual, and affordable, and we had a lovely meal. I ordered Sancerre, which came with ice. I didn’t see any other wine served this way. I happen to like my Sancerre with a little ice, so this was fine with me. Carey made friends with a nearby dog, she had fish and chips and I had a club sandwich, and it was a lovely way to spend an hour or two. We didn’t really care about Saint Tropez itself, we mainly wanted to take the boat trip. But we did walk around and look at the yachts, expensive boutiques, and sun bathers.

In addition to lunch and a small hairbrush, plus a few postcards, I also purchased some stamps. That’s about what I could afford in Saint Tropez.

After our beautiful boat ride back to Cannes, we wandered around there a bit more, found an old church where we could light candles for those gone from us, had a disgusting dinner (we thought it was French onion soup, which it sort of was, but not good.) and went back to our timeshare. The next day we were leaving early to catch the train to Paris, so we needed to get organized. The South of France was really lovely.