Known villages

Sainte MaximeThe most beautiful beach town

The town is well situated, with white sandy beaches along the coast, and the forested hills of the Maures providing protection from the winds and wonderful areas for walking and hiking. Sainte Maxime is a dynamic town, with a large indigenous population that’s augmented every summer with visitors from around the world. The town center and the immediate surrounding area has plenty of lodging and dining available. Shopping ranges from small Provençal markets in the center to large modern shopping centers.
Some of the medieval aspects of Sainte Maxime have been retained. The town hall (mairie) is still visibly a 15th-c chateau, and the defensive Tour Carrée dates from the 16th century.
Just about every kind of sport you can imagine (excepting winter sports) is available here. The seaside provides everything from swimming and sailing to scuba diving and water skiing. The surrounding hills provide walking and hiking trails, mountain biking and horseback riding. There’s a clay pigeon shooting place north of the town, and of course tennis and several golf courses.

Cyclilng. There’s a cycling path along a good part of the coast along here, along side the busy road; St Tropez, Port Grimaud, towards Ste Maxime, but we haven’t checked it out all the way.

St TropezDé plaats van de Cote d'Azur

The seaside resort town Saint Tropez is still very popular with the tourists, although the jetset and the in-crowd have long since left it behind. Set on the lovely blue water of the Bay of Saint-Tropez, this modern version of a medieval town is most popular for the line of yachts along the quai, and the facing line of terrace cafés, divided by a parade of strolling tourists and slow cruising expensive cars.
Behind the cafés, the small streets and old buildings are picturesque, but they’re more popular for the multitude of shops and restaurants than historical significance. There are endless possibilities for buying gifts or items of proof that “you’ve been here”.

Movie stars and other famous pretty people do pass through, ‘though not so frequently as yesteryear. The most famous, of course, are insconced in the fabulous private estates set along the coast, protected from the curious eyes of all but those with the means to rent helicopters and light aircraft. Our late Princess Diana, for example, did spend the night in a local discotheque this August (1997), but it was closed to all but her private party.

The town’s Office de Tourisme, located along the center of the main drag, is very active. The multilingual staff is friendly and helpful, and they have their own Internet web site. Excellent maps and informational brochures are available 7 days a week.

Fréjus en St RafaëlThe! tourist cities

Fréjus is a large, sprawling town with some famous Roman ruins. It’s also a very popular summertime tourist town, although the center of town is a couple of km from the beaches, which are 2 km long and 100 m wide of fine sand, between Fréjus and St. Raphaël.

For an interesting and relatively inexpensive Saturday, spend the day in the Cathedral Square. There’s a lovely mixed market in the morning, and then in the afternoon the wedding parties arrive to celebrate their nuptials at the Maire and at the Cathedral. In one afternoon we saw four fabulous weddings, one where all the guests wore traditional Provencal costume and another in which the bride wore a fabulous blood-red dress. They arrive in a variety of transport – horse-and-cart, Fiat Uno, Mini – all making a lot of noise, and they depart in the same way for a drive in convoy around the town. The outfits worn by some of the wedding guests call into question the idea that the French have inate style!

MonacoAn independent state

Monaco, this is the second smallest independent state in the world (after the Vatican) and is almost entirely urban. Monte Carlo is not the capital of Monaco but a government district. The country is divided into four areas: Monaco-Ville (the old city), the Condamine (port quarter), Monte-Carlo (business and recreation), and Fontvieille (recreation and light industry). With no natural resources to exploit other than its location and climate, the principality has become a resort for tourists and a tax haven for businesses. Monaco is six times the size of the Vatican and the world’s most densely populated independent country.

GrimaudA perched village

The village of Grimaud is a perched village, with historical links to the Grimaldi family. Gibelin de Grimaldi aided William the Good drive the Saracens of Fraxinet out of the area in AD 973 and was rewarded with the land. The village is dominated by its 11th century castle (partially restored).

Port Grimaud is part of Grimaud. It is located seven kilometres (four miles) west of Saint-Tropez and seven kilometres south-east of Sainte Maxime. This seaside town was created by architect François Spoerry in the 1960s based around the marshes of the river Giscle on the bay of Saint Tropez. Built with channels in a Venetian manner, but with French “Fishermans” style houses resembling those in Saint Tropez. The mainly traffic free town is popular with boat owners as most properties come with their own berth. The success of the first phase of the development meant that Port Grimaud 2 (extending the town further East) was completed in the 1970s and then again, Port Grimaud 3 was in the 90s. The Church of St Francis of Assisi in the main place d’Eglise contains stained glass by Victor Vasarely.

Plan de la TourA picturesque wine village

Plan-de-la-Tour is a small village in the Massif des Maures hills, about 15 km northwest of St Tropez and Ste Maxime on the coast. The village of la Garde-Freinet is 10 km southwest, along a twisty little road through the woods.
The village is located in an oasis of cleared farms and vineyards in the midst of the Maures forests of pine, pubescent oak, cork oak and olive trees. Corks from the numerous cork oaks are one of the local products – along with Côte de Provence wines, olives, red and yellow marble and pewter. Color is added in the first few months of the year with mimosa growing thickly, in peoples gardens, on the hillsides along the northwest part of town and along the roads and lanes nearby.

CannesA fishing village

The port of Cannes view of the famous Boulevard de la Croisette In the Middle Ages Cannes was a feudal depency of the Lérins monastery. Until the early 19th century, Cannes remained a small agricultural and fishing village with the highest density of population on Le Suquet hill. Beginning in the 1830s, foreign and French aristocrats built holiday homes in the area, gradually turning Cannes into a resort town. The man responsible for Cannes’ growth is Lord Henry Peter Brougham (1778–1868). A respected and talented British politician in his time, he discovered Cannes in 1834 on his way to Italy. Having bought land to the west of the Suquet hill, now the entrance to the city, Brougham used his many contacts in French politics to help develop the rest. The development of the coastal village encouraged enterprise and a tramway, the Tramway de Cannes opened in 1899, Cannes Station opened in 1863.

NiceThe shop city

The Promenade des Anglais (“Walk of the English”) is a celebrated promenade along the Mediterranean at Nice, France. Before Nice was urbanized, the coast at Nice was just bordered by a deserted band of beach covered by large pebbles. The first houses were located on higher ground well away from the sea. Starting in the second half of the 18th century, the English took to spending the winter in Nice, enjoying the panorama along the coast. When a particularly harsh winter up north brought an influx of beggars to Nice, some of the rich Englishmen proposed a useful project for them: the construction of walkway (chemin de promenade) along the sea. The city of Nice, intrigued by the prospect of a pleasant promenade, greatly increased the scope of the work. The Promenade was first called the Camin dei Anglès (the English Way) by the Niçois in their native dialect Nissart. After the annexation of Nice by France in 1860 it was rechristened La Promenade des Anglais, replacing the former Nissart name with its French translation. The Hotel Negresco on the Promenade des Anglais on the Baie des Anges in Nice, France was named for Henri Negresco (1868-1920) who had the palatial hotel constructed in 1912. In keeping with the conventions of the times, when the Negresco first opened in 1913 its front opened on the side opposite the Mediterranean.