Antibes day five and St. Tropez

The older St. TropezSt. Tropes harborSt. Tropez harborSt. Tropez beachSt. Tropez beachSt. Tropez
A square in St TropezJust one of so many

St. Tropez, a set on Flickr.

Today we decided to visit St Tropez. This is about one and a half hours away via the toll roads, or two and a half hours without the tolls, so we opted for the toll roads.
About two thirds of our way into the journey and at about the start of the St.Tropez Bay and with still about 15km to go, we hit a massive traffic jam that had drawn the traffic for miles to a complete holt. The temp was just on 30deg and with the 5 of us in the small car, with the aircon on full it got hot and boring.
After sitting still for about 30 min we made the decision to tell Jenifer the GPS to ignore the road where the traffic jam was (better to be moving and doing something than sitting still in the heat) and to find and alternative route. This she did….but man did we go on some skinny, out of the way roads. It took us another 40mins to finally reach St. Tropez, hot, bothered and desperate to find a toilet. Andrew had done a brilliant job as our driver and some how he had managed to keep his cool for most of the journey. We had no idea wether or not we had benefited from this maneuver, but suspected we had.
St. Tropez town itself was not at all what we expected. We had been told that this is where the ultra rich play. We saw none of the opulence of the likes of Monaco. It was much older and apart from the large luxury launches it was hard to see what the appeal really was. It had some quaint lovely streets and shops but nothing that much different to other places. We could see more of a modern city on the other side of the bay and started wondering if that was where the rich play.
What we did find was a very nice beach with the clearest water we had seen so far so we spent a big part of the day after our late lunch at 2pm just swimming and sitting in the sun.
As it was now getting a bit later we decided to head home after a big Gelato each that was just great on such a hot day.
We made our way back to the other side of the bay to see if it was any different to the side we had just visited. We had no sooner got on the road than we where in another traffic jam. Thankfully this one moved along a bit faster but the other side of the bay was no different other than being newer with some large camping grounds going right down to the beach.
We all agreed that for the time and toll fees it took to get there, we would not have missed much had we not gone. However we have been there and seen it and that’s another one ticked off.
We did not get home until about 8pm so decided to go out for tea. We found a great Moroccan restaurant that offered some of the best food and service we have experienced by far. It was a lot of fun at the beginning trying to ask if they had gluten free options for Andrew. Thankfully one of the other dinners spoke English and translated for us… Lots of laughs and good fun.
We finally headed home around midnight on this very calm and very warm balmy night before our last day in Antibes.

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