SAINT-TROPEZ In A Day

February 2008
Sometime during the 3-day Monaco stopover, the BF came up with the CRAZY idea of heading to St Tropez, just for a day trip. One quick phone call and a chopper booking later, we found ourselves heading to this part of the French Riviera, for one day! We made the trip on the BF’s birthday.

It was a beautiful day for flying, and this time I had more time (25 minutes each way) to take in the beauty of the Mediterranean Sea. Our pilot was amused, and surprised to find out we had no luggage on this trip.

We arrived at St Tropez at around 10 in the morning, on one of those gorgeous sunny winter days where there was not a cloud in the sky. To get around, we rented a car with a driver.

Seeing Red in St Tropez
First stop was for coffee. And we found ourselves at Senequier where everything, and I mean everything was in bright, screaming red. And that included the furniture, and right down to the menu and wrapper for the sugar cubes. If I had known any of this, I may have picked out a different outfit.

Went for a stroll after coffee, and I was pleased to discover that it was a market day! So of course I had a browse and picked up a trinket from one of the stalls. It was low-season at that time of the year, the shops were quiet, and the streets were not crowded.

We ventured around, and found this restaurant to try for lunch. But the lady at the front of house said they were fully booked, and told us to return in an hour. At low season! Anyways, we had another walk around, and when we showed up again, they had a table ready for us. And it was a good pick. I had no idea that it was a famous restaurant, till I looked it up after the trip. RESTAURANT – Le Quai – Saint-Tropez. Turns out Le Quai is where celebrities would hang out during the high season, and it offers the multiple setup of restaurant/bar/club.

But the first thing that caught my attention at the restaurant was the all-white leather upholstery, and the super cool and classy way the furnishing matches the flooring, which is covered in very fine, sugar-powdered sand.

It also turns out that Le Quai is a seafood restaurant! Thankfully, there were a handful of vegetable dishes for the vegetarian BF. And the artichoke done in three ways, was some of the best artichokes I’ve ever tasted.

After lunch we strolled around the shops and the marina area for a bit. It was quiet that day, not much was going on.

Next stop – we headed to the beach, stopped by at a spot on Key West Beach for a drink, before heading back to the heliport.

We pushed back our departure from St Tropez by an hour to 4pm without any difficulty. Guess that’s one good thing about traveling during the low season. And it was another blissful ride over the Mediterranean, back to Monte Carlo.