The year 1978 brought the Talking Heads’ album “More Songs About Buildings and Food.” This blog post is about more stories of city-harbors, beaches, art and food. St. Tropez is part of the French Riviera and has been immortalized in film and books– Brigitte Bardot, beach clubs, seafood, yachts and money (although of late, we may need to add Russians to the list as a separate item).
Not to take the Russians to task, I know if I had gobs of nefarious cash, lived in Russia where the weather sucks and the beaches are bad, I’d take every opportunity to escape to St. Tropez. Who would want to fight against such a flight to a place that has around 310 days of sun every year?
Believe it or not St. Tropez was once a pilgrimage site. In AD 68, a Roman soldier named Torpes was beheaded for professing his Christian faith in front of Emperor Nero, transforming the spot into a pilgrimage site.
The ‘old’ city of St. Tropez surrounds the harbor, but this really isn’t an ‘old’ city but more of an outside shopping mall of high end retail stores that happen to be hosted in the shell of an ‘old city’- not really living in a city’s carcass, but kind of like that. That said, Coco Chanel brought high fashion to this area in the 1920’s and St. Tropez may be the best shopping destination outside of Paris.
The harbor contains two types of boat. Those belonging to locals who inherited a mooring from their decedents and still hold them, and the money folks with large yachts who can afford the $15,000 a week charges. But if your yacht costs four or five million, then the mooring fees for a week is like a normal person paying $25 bucks a week to park their car.
Our visit was the tale of two cities, one when the sky was overcast and rained a little and one when the sun finally broke free for an extended period of illumination. We like to think that light changes all things, but it does not. [Ed. I do not agree with this statement- if it’s not sunny outside- I’m miserable- plus I did not see a single person with a St. Tropez Tan…] ( It just changes our perspectives or our outlook– something that we should all strive to control ourselves. Below are images around the harbor during the two and a half days we spent in St. Tropez (Lisa’s favorite place to live so far in France). I think the first image is of a man with a plumber’s crack taking photos of a couple of fancy bottles of wine in the sunset- the sun and the moon, all in one shot.
People work in St. Tropez, from the chef’s helpers who need to grab food for the restaurant, to the yacht runners grabbing supplies, to the shop keepers preparing for the day, to the fish mongers, to the recyclers.
Art can improve environments and lives. There was a series of large bronze body parts through out the town juxtaposed against yachts, old buildings and people. We saw the artist talking with some people about his artwork and watched someone ‘shoo’ him away so they could take a photo in front of a huge grasping hand, without ever knowing who he was. http://www.bezzina-bernard.com/galeries
The main beach area is a couple of kilometers outside of town. Instead of having condos and hotels all along the three kilometer beach front, blocking nature, things are kept much more open. There are ‘beach clubs’ all along the strip of sand that rent loungers, umbrellas, serve food, host fancy dining, and depending on the beach club, play music. We went to three different beach clubs in one day to get a sample of the environment. You had to drive thru a vineyard in order to get to the beach! First we went to Le Club 55 which is one of the oldest and the most chic. http://www.club55.fr/ We passed up on the fancy dining area and instead ate at their beach bar close to the water. There was a pier where some diners arrived via boat to their lunch.
From here, we went to two more clubs and found some good artwork along the way, a mysterious forest and more.
What about food you ask dear reader, yes, we did eat:
On our last day, we drove to Escalet Beach in nearby Ramatuelle and did a short hike.
This is absolutely remarkable photography and commentary! Keep it coming!
Big dan