We’ve been all around the French Riviera, but never here. So, we have mapped out a totally Ed and Cathy day today. Because of course, you all know we are not the beachy, see to be seen resort types – so we’ll be doing interestingly odd things. Sadly, it is a tender port, and that is one thing in which this particular ship does not excel. But we do manage to somehow find a sweet spot between tours and get a tender right away (albeit in the very front bench seat where you have to watch you don’t knock yourself out on the window handles with the bobbing of the tender). Thank God it is a quick trip into the pier and we can get off that thing relatively quickly and unscathed.
From the pier it’s a quick walk to town, where we stop at the first café we see for a cappuccino. Expensive. But, yeah, it’s St. Tropez. Onward we march, through the town proper, passing these great black and gold statues that are all over town, to the tourist office for a map and brochures, where an oddly lifelike swimmer statue is placed out front, then up to the Citadel for the war history museum and the views.
The views are great from up here – you can see all around, including our ship (under the watchful eye of the cannons – one wrong move and we’ll blow you to smithereens – LOL). Inside the museum area, there are 2 floors of very interesting displays all about fishing, fishermen, military and the defenses built up on the coast. Plus there is a rooftop viewing area that has even more beautiful views across the water and hillside. Quite the nice little visit.
Leaving the citadel, we walk back into town to the Gendarmerie and Cinema museum located in the old Gendarmerie building. Even though we know nothing about French cinema, this turns out to be a great visit. Most of the first floor is devoted to a local French comedian/actor, Michel Galabru, who made a series of movies about Gendarmes beginning in the 1960s and continuing for 18 years. He sounds like he was the most interesting man – lots of stories (thankfully translated in English) about who he was, what he did in life and how he acted. It was really quite a fun exhibit. The 2nd floor had a whole room full of exhibits on the actual Gendarmerie, actual desks that were used there and an entire display about how the Gendarmes were conscripted, where they lived and how they came to build a barracks like building to house them all.
After that, the displays morphed back into cinema with a room with 2 little cars and a movie screen that make it look like you were driving, an exhibit that tried to explain the St. Tropez culture with a hip guy hanging out under a Brigette Bardot painting, then an actual Brigette Bardot section that talked about her life. All in all a very nice little diversion!
Now it is time for lunch – and being St. Tropez, well, it is crazy expensive (have I mentioned the window display with a lady’s outfit – blouse, jacket, pants, purse and shoes – that cost 14,000 Euros!!!! Crazy) – so of course, we are doing the Ed and Cathy thing and walking to the main road on the opposite side of town to Le Bikini, a restaurant Ed has found that has a good menu and decent prices.
This is the cutest place. The décor is all beachy, but in a really relaxed, campy sort of way. Not the hoity-toity St. Tropez way. The menu is great. I don’t know if anyone here really speaks a lot of English, but we make do and manage to order the fish and chips and the goat cheese salad. We start off with a little dish of lentils being delivered to the table that we really don’t know what to do with – until we watch the guys next to us who just eat them out of the bowl. Our main meals come, both of which are huge and wonderful, and we just hang outside in our garden table enjoying the food, the weather and the ambiance.
Even though I’m the only woman there except the waitress! This is thoroughly a working man’s restaurant – everyone else in here is some sort of worker – all the cars in the lot are work vans. And you can see why – the food is excellent and well-priced – they have a prix fixe menu for 17 Euro with a lamb stew, white rice and salad plus dessert. How can you go wrong? You can’t! Even the wine and beer are well priced.
Fully sated, we walk back to town, stopping at the local grocery store but not finding anything much to bring back – not even a good bottle of French Sauvignon (which ends up being a good thing because when we get back to the tender my bag is thoroughly searched by a local gendarme before boarding the tender – don’t think my bladder full of wine would have made it). We are trying to time our arrival back into town with the opening of the Maison des Papillion – the House of Butterflies – which opens at 2pm. Unfortunately, we’re a little early, and we are NOT going to stop for a drink somewhere (over here, in town, on the waterfront, drinks are 16 euros!), so we end up sitting along the harbor, people watching and wasting time until the 2 o’clock opening.
Arriving back at the museum (which is located down a little alleyway with butterflies stamped into the pavement), they open right on time and we are let into the magical world of butterflies. Located in the home of Dany Lartigue, an “amateur enthusiast” who was both painter and entomologist, the first floor holds a collection of tropical butterflies, all collected by Dany who was fascinated with butterflies. There are loads and loads of specimens, each more beautiful than the next. And totally intriguing – like the butterflies that are camouflaged to look like leaves. Outside on the ground level is a sweet little patio with a totem pole and somewhat Aztec-ish tile inlay on the stone patio floor. The museum curator said we could come sit outside there, but there is no café there anymore (at least that’s what I think he said in very heavily accented English).
The 2nd floor though is the best – here we find a selection of Dany’s work and a video that explains why he has created his art in this way. He loved gardens and gardening and would paint Provencal landscape scenes. While he was outside painting, butterflies landed on his painting. He tried to capture their beauty in his paintings but could never get the detail he desired. Then he had an inspiration – as the butterflies came to visit him and landed on him and the painting, he decided he would capture the butterflies and literally put them into the paintings. There are about 50 of these paintings hung on the walls and displayed on shelves – each intriguing and interesting and beautiful in their own way.
Also on the 2nd floor is the studio where he worked – still equipped with a desk and lots of bric-a-brac that he obviously collected. A lovely little find and totally fun way to end our St. Tropez visit.
Walking through the lovely little cobblestone streets…
…we make it back to the pier easily where the local security rifles through my backpack before letting us onto the tender and back aboard for the last night of our 2nd leg on the Dawn.
Andiamo 