One of the major goals of our friends on this trip is to visit Saint Tropez. At least for one of them it is a lifelong dream and today we hope we will be able to fulfill it. The adventure starts at the ferry dock where we buy tickets for the boat to Saint Tropez and then it is time to wait for it to come in. We see it from a distance as it comes in so we join the line and wait for the people to disembark and then we board and start on the short ride over to Saint Tropez, or so we think.
The waters here are much busier than we expected with yachts and small boats just zooming by as the ferry threads between them making its way in the wrong direction in our opinion.
And our opinion is right, we enter a harbor which is not Saint Tropez by far. We are not sure what is happening until we look more closely and the ferry is not direct, it has one stop along the way. Entering the harbor is really slow as we stay in thequeue of small boats that are moving slowly as they go back to their docking spots.
We find out that this is Port Grimaud, the Venice of Provence, the other major settlement here. It is a relatively new settlement, only since the 1960s, and quite popular as almost every house has its own boat berth.
And then it is time to leave Port Grimaud leaving hopefully towards Saint Tropez. We pass many huge yachts along the way, this is an area very popular with ultra rich people especially in the summer.
And then we start seeing Saint Tropez in the distance and there is a large queue of yachts blocking the entrance. So it is good that our boat actually is going to the new harbor which is close by but outside of the queue, quite neat.
Our disembarkation point is close to one of the places we wanted to visit, the Gendarmerie Nationale building. This is a former police building now made into a “History of Cinema” museum. There is a reason for this, the building is iconic as the place of many famous Louis de Funès movies that we have seen during our childhood. Unfortunately we cannot enter it, it is already closed but at least we can see the outside exhibits.
We decide to continue on towards the old harbor, where we have to take the ferry back, and explore the downtown area. This is a very expensive area with many expensive cars and houses worth more than our lifetime income probably.
The houses are nice but not that special really, they are typically Provence buildings with beautiful windows and painted in warm colors.
We enter a few art stores along the way looking at the interesting art and marveling at the prices, a bit outside of our range, most of them.
There are other quirky cars and stores along the way as we slowly make our way towards the old harbor.
We spend some time in the central park, Place des Lices, where we buy some provisions and also try to help an injured pigeon but are unable to unfortunately.
Where there are rich people there are also upscale fashion stores like Dior, Brigitte Bardot, Balenciaga and others. We do not enter those as likely we would be shown politely out the door soon after entering. Or so we assume…
And then we enter the old harbor area and are shocked at the number of people here. Until now the streets were busy but not that bad but here it is crazy busy with throngs of people concentrated in the small strip of land between the sea and the city.
All the berths here are full with huge yachts, they are so huge that some of them are carrying another small boat inside them. Many of them are open for guests, invited guests that is with security and staff carefully screening everyone that approaches them.
Here we also take note of the beautiful sunset over the harbor, we arrived just at the right time to enjoy it. There is also a small fort nearby and it seems free to enter so on we go, maybe we will have a better view from the top of the fort.
And the view is magnificent, both over the sea with the sunset and of the busy harbor with all the people milling about. We spend here the rest of the time until the ferry arrives and then it is time to descend to take the ferry back to Cogolin.
Leaving Saint Tropez at night via ferry is quite scenic with some great views of the famous city as we easily exit the harbor at this time of day. We then make again a stop in Port Grimaud before returning to Cogolin where we spend a couple more hours with our friends on the beach before going to sleep.
