- Home
- My Mother is Coming to Live With Me a memoir by Lynne Cheson
- About Lynne
- My Story January 1999
- January 1999 After My Husband Died
- January, 1999 Part 2
- February, 1999
- March, 1999
- writersandartists.com poetryandprose.com
- Share Your Food Diary
-
December 14
(0)St Tropez St. Tropez, France Information by Rough Guides
>
> The origins of *ST-TROPEZ* are unremarkable: a little fishing village that grew up around a port founded by the Greeks of Marseille, which was destroyed by the Saracens in 739 and finally fortified in the late Middle Ages. Its sole distinction from the myriad other fishing villages along this coast was its inaccessibility. Stuck out on the southern shores of the Golfe de St-Tropez, away from the main coastal routes on a wide peninsula that never warranted real roads, St-Tropez could only easily be reached by boat. This held true as late as the 1880s, when the novelist Guy de Maupassant sailed his yacht into the port during his final high-living binge before the onset of syphilitic insanity.
>
> Soon after de Maupassant’s fleeting visit, the painter and leader of the neo-Impressionists, Paul Signac, was sailing down the coast when bad weather forced him to moor in St-Tropez. He instantly decided to build a house there, to which he invited his friends. Matisse was one of the first to accept, with Bonnard, Marquet, Dufy, Dérain, Vlaminck, Seurat and Van Dongen following suit, and by the eve of World War I St-Tropez was pretty well established as a hangout for bohemians. The 1930s saw a new influx of artists, this time of writers as much as painters: Cocteau, Colette and Anaïs Nin, whose journal records “girls riding bare-breasted in the back of open cars”. In 1956 Roger Vadim arrived to film Brigitte Bardot in /Et Dieu Créa la Femme/. The international cult of Tropezian sun, sex and celebrities took off – even the 1960s hippies who flocked to the revamped Mediterranean Mecca of liberation managed to look glamorous – and the resort has been big-money mainstream ever since.
>
> Hello my Girl, My story about St Tropez
>
> In the 1980′s my husband and I traveled extensively and one of the many trips we went on was to France. In the beginning we started in Paris. We loved France and their people and its history and started to branch out into other areas different towns and cities. One of those areas was Provence in the South of France. We stayed there for a week or so and while chatting with other tourists and citizens of France that we met during out trip we began to hear about St Tropez and how it was a jewel of the Mediterranean. It seemed that it was abut two and a half hours from Aix de Provence a beautiful town were we were staying near and since we had a rental car we decided to take the trip to this small fishing village. We did the trip, although as I remember it was a bit longer than we thought but as we found out very much worthwhile. We were hooked at the beautiful harbor full of huge yachts parked right in front of the port. What little we were able to see that first day trip hooked my husband and I. There was one sad glitch. Unfortunately the shops were all closed . The French shopkeepers closed for three hour sometimes four hours every day.. All I could do was peer into the windows of fabulous looking stores with the most wonderful array of clothing, jewelry, shoes, handbags, objects d’art and so much more, tucked in original buildings from the 1800′s. As we walked on cobblestone paved streets winding through this amazing ancient town passing one closed store with another my husband and I got hungry. Luckily the restaurants were the only places open and we found an outside cafe with many people eating pizza, salad and drinking wine. We sat down and ordered a pizza. I remember it was called pizza Margareta. It was the first time I ever heard that type of pizza. Or actually all the different types of pizza they had on the menu. We ordered and ate the best thin crust pizza we had ever eaten, another first for us as the USA only had the Italian regular pizza at the time. I dont actually remember the salad other than it was inventive and breathtaking delicious. I didnt have wine as I was the designated driver in France, and didnt want to drink and drive. We walked some more and realized that we had a long couple of hours drive back to Provence. While we left Tropez I vowed to come back. When we finished our trip in France and got home I found out even more about that haunting village- a hidden peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean. I found out about Collete and her statement telling how St Tropez has only one way in and one way out. A place most people never leave. I also heard about the artists such as Matisse, Van Gogh and so many other famous people that went there and stayed for long period of times. I heard about Bridgett Bardot one of most famous woman in the world and how she had a home there.
>
> Even the surrounding countryside was beyond spectacular. Nothing like we ever see in the United States. And there was one more thing-I had to get back to those enticing stores that were shut to my husband and I that day. Although I do not think my husband cared about that part as much as I did.
> The next year we went to Nice and then Cannes, but I only thought about St Tropez as it was so different and special. The stores we saw in Cannes were the same we saw in Paris-expensive, fancy and too sophisticated for me. Even the restaurants were big and expensive and no where near casual. There were hardly any out door cafes and we didnt find those special thin crust pizzas. I longed to go back to St Tropez. During this trip my husband and I drove again to St Tropez from the direction away from Cannes and we were amazed at the one after the other beach towns we drove passed during our trip from this direction. But nothing could beat the secluded place we had found the year before. We woke up early to get to St Tropez in the morning and check out the shops while they were open. Well they had items that I never saw even in New York City. My heart was starting to beat fast. I felt like a kid in a candy store. The most amazing candy store in the world. I wanted to live there stay there-shop there. We were hooked. My husband and I checked out some of the hotels and different restaurants. We went into art galleries, and tee shirt stores and sat at the cafes watching the patrons on the huge yachts watching us drinking cappucino at the open air cafe’s at the port. My husband and I decided to go straight to St Tropez the next year. There was still too much we hadnt seen in this wonderful fairy tale town.> We did and discovered the miles of white sand and azure blue waters. We chose the beach we stayed in from then on it was named Club 55. The restaurant was famous and we made a reservation over a month before we arrived for each day we were staying in St Tropez. Banyan trees circled the restaurant and when you walked towards it the trees opened up to the most beautiful open air restaurant better than anything or as good as New York at its best. I remember seeing Paul Anka walking along and other famous celebrities that I forgot their names. There was one other thing that I decided to try for. You see I saw so many beautiful couples wheeling baby carriages. I didnt know if these fashionable women and men lived in St Tropez or were tourists like we were, but the need started to swell inside me that I wanted to wheel my baby in this magical town. In 1988 my dream came true. I had my Alexi-Rae and the next summer me and my family wheeled around the cobblestone street with our child. This time I got to shop in the myriad baby shops and the other great shops that I had frequented in past years. We took that trip every year until we lost our rock and my hero and we never went back again. But going to St Tropez each year and watching my baby grown into a sweet girl is a memory that will never leave me. I will never forget St Tropez and know that one day my daughter and I will be back. You see its in our blood
>>
![[Post to Twitter]](http://asklynne.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt.png){kind=icon}
Recent Comments