![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
If it weren't for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laurie31 recently leaving her wonderful comments on my journal, I'd almost forgotten I haven't finished my trip report yet!
So resuming where I left off before I got side tracked by the BSG All Access Event, I'm now at Day 10 of my French Vacation:
Today (Wednesday) we had a dinner reservation in Monte Carlo at 20:00. But other than that, the day was pretty open. It was a nice sunny day. Since the "day at the beach" didn't quite turn out well for our friends yesterday, we all felt like having another go at it today. Only this time, we thought about going to Saint-Tropez instead. From the "advices" we received from the locals in Fréjus, a town looked about half way to St. Tropez on the map, we estimated it would only take about 45 minutes to get there.
Since our friends "lost" us the day before, Geoff requested being the leader of our little "convoy" this time. With him driving, the duty of directing the route fell on me instead. Armed with the map, I of course chose the most direct route RN7 instead of highway A8. Little did I know RN7 winds through the mountain. So what looked like a small distance actually turned out to be a much longer way. Also Geoff had to drive slower on the winding road because Andy complained about his stomach being queasy again. The good thing was we didn't loose anybody. But it took us well over an hour to get to St. Tropez!
The drive seemed to go on forever. At one point, we were so anxious to get there we almost mistook a charming "little" beach town as St. Tropez. It turned out to be Ste. Maxime, a beautiful seaside vacation town 5 km north of St. Tropez. If we weren't so determined to get to St. Tropez, I would've been just as happy to stop there instead! But we drove on, and finally, at a little under two hours since we started, we got to the outskirt of St. Tropez! There we saw a bunch of "beach umbrella" signs at an intersection. We stopped and conferred quickly. Which beach should we go? This little jaunt was so spur of moment, we did little research on where to go beforehand. Now that we were here, we decided we would just stop at the first beach we "hit."
The first beach we found was Moorea Beach. Unlike the beaches in Monaco, it has soft sands instead of the hard pebbles. On the other hand, IMHO it's not THAT special when compared to the beaches in the Caribbeans, or the beaches in Hawaii. However, I did notice there appeared to have more private yachts perched on the waves nearby. Geoff went and bargained with the attendant there to get 3 lounge chairs and an umbrella for €42 (yap, he calls that a bargain!) Kids were ecstatic by the time we got to the beach, they barely allowed the adults to put sunscreen on them before rushing off to play in the sand, or wad into the ocean.
We ended up spending hours at the beach. At one point, our friends went and rented a pedalboat with a small slide on the back for the kids. I've never seen anything like it before, and it was so much fun for kids (and some adults who got a turn to pedal the boat). Poor Andy, he wanted to pedal that thing so much, but he just didn't quite have the strength to get the boat going. Kids all had fun taking their turns on the slide. Originally, it was a little scary for our friends' 4 year old son to slide into the ocean. But the au pair was there for protection so he overcame his fear and went for it!
While we were lounging on the beach, there were some peddlers came by to sell their goods. Most of the stuffs were counterfeits. My friend saw a fake Breitling watch that was pretty nice. But the guy originally asked for €250! Uhm, not going to happen! In the end though, with a little help from Geoff, she bargained it down to €60. Hehe, not a bad little "toy" for her hubby! It actually looked pretty cool, a good imitation of a Breitling as far as look goes.
I tried to get into the water. It was pretty frigid. So I didn't stay in the ocean for long. On the way back, I picked up a broken piece of jellyfish which freaked my friends out. One of them had actually got stun by a couple of jellyfishes when she wadded through the water. Thank goodness it wasn't the poisonous kind, so nothing bad happened to her. But she refused to go into the water again for the rest of the day.
Our day was going by fast. Before long, we had to pack up and leave so we can make our dinner reservation on time. We left the beach before 17:00. The drive back from Saint-Tropez was hellish because of the heavy traffic jam. But all in all, it was a relaxing and well spent day at the beach (minus the tedious driving) IMO.
laurie31 recently leaving her wonderful comments on my journal, I'd almost forgotten I haven't finished my trip report yet!So resuming where I left off before I got side tracked by the BSG All Access Event, I'm now at Day 10 of my French Vacation:
Today (Wednesday) we had a dinner reservation in Monte Carlo at 20:00. But other than that, the day was pretty open. It was a nice sunny day. Since the "day at the beach" didn't quite turn out well for our friends yesterday, we all felt like having another go at it today. Only this time, we thought about going to Saint-Tropez instead. From the "advices" we received from the locals in Fréjus, a town looked about half way to St. Tropez on the map, we estimated it would only take about 45 minutes to get there.
Since our friends "lost" us the day before, Geoff requested being the leader of our little "convoy" this time. With him driving, the duty of directing the route fell on me instead. Armed with the map, I of course chose the most direct route RN7 instead of highway A8. Little did I know RN7 winds through the mountain. So what looked like a small distance actually turned out to be a much longer way. Also Geoff had to drive slower on the winding road because Andy complained about his stomach being queasy again. The good thing was we didn't loose anybody. But it took us well over an hour to get to St. Tropez!
The drive seemed to go on forever. At one point, we were so anxious to get there we almost mistook a charming "little" beach town as St. Tropez. It turned out to be Ste. Maxime, a beautiful seaside vacation town 5 km north of St. Tropez. If we weren't so determined to get to St. Tropez, I would've been just as happy to stop there instead! But we drove on, and finally, at a little under two hours since we started, we got to the outskirt of St. Tropez! There we saw a bunch of "beach umbrella" signs at an intersection. We stopped and conferred quickly. Which beach should we go? This little jaunt was so spur of moment, we did little research on where to go beforehand. Now that we were here, we decided we would just stop at the first beach we "hit."
The first beach we found was Moorea Beach. Unlike the beaches in Monaco, it has soft sands instead of the hard pebbles. On the other hand, IMHO it's not THAT special when compared to the beaches in the Caribbeans, or the beaches in Hawaii. However, I did notice there appeared to have more private yachts perched on the waves nearby. Geoff went and bargained with the attendant there to get 3 lounge chairs and an umbrella for €42 (yap, he calls that a bargain!) Kids were ecstatic by the time we got to the beach, they barely allowed the adults to put sunscreen on them before rushing off to play in the sand, or wad into the ocean.
We ended up spending hours at the beach. At one point, our friends went and rented a pedalboat with a small slide on the back for the kids. I've never seen anything like it before, and it was so much fun for kids (and some adults who got a turn to pedal the boat). Poor Andy, he wanted to pedal that thing so much, but he just didn't quite have the strength to get the boat going. Kids all had fun taking their turns on the slide. Originally, it was a little scary for our friends' 4 year old son to slide into the ocean. But the au pair was there for protection so he overcame his fear and went for it!
While we were lounging on the beach, there were some peddlers came by to sell their goods. Most of the stuffs were counterfeits. My friend saw a fake Breitling watch that was pretty nice. But the guy originally asked for €250! Uhm, not going to happen! In the end though, with a little help from Geoff, she bargained it down to €60. Hehe, not a bad little "toy" for her hubby! It actually looked pretty cool, a good imitation of a Breitling as far as look goes.
I tried to get into the water. It was pretty frigid. So I didn't stay in the ocean for long. On the way back, I picked up a broken piece of jellyfish which freaked my friends out. One of them had actually got stun by a couple of jellyfishes when she wadded through the water. Thank goodness it wasn't the poisonous kind, so nothing bad happened to her. But she refused to go into the water again for the rest of the day.
Our day was going by fast. Before long, we had to pack up and leave so we can make our dinner reservation on time. We left the beach before 17:00. The drive back from Saint-Tropez was hellish because of the heavy traffic jam. But all in all, it was a relaxing and well spent day at the beach (minus the tedious driving) IMO.
