Port Grimaud and St.Tropez, South of France

I have had a crazy amazing summer this year and am so excited to share all my adventures on here! It started out with Sophie and I traveling across the world to Thailand for 18 days- one of the best trips of my life- but we will get to that later!

First I want to write about the family vacation I recently took to the South of France, one of my favorite places. Every summer that we come here we stay in a small rented house on the water in a town called Port Grimaud. Everything here is very simple and calm- a big change from the nearby city St. Tropez. Days here are the perfect mixture of lazy breakfasts on the patio with fresh baguette from the local market and crazy afternoons at the beach clubs of St.Tropez. 

Here is a picture of our neighbors house and underneath is the view from ours. Its a gorgeous French town and very charming. Everyone parks their boats outside their houses and every morning people can either walk or take a little "put put" or dingy to get fresh bread/cheese/etc from the market nearby. 

After a while though it gets too peaceful for our family which is when we head out to the beach for a late lunch. 

 Our second day at the beach we went to Nioulargo which is one of our two favorites. It was a cloudy day and we stayed from 1:00-7:00 with our friends. Days here of course end around midnight so this wasn't too outrageous. 

The drive to any beach in St.Tropez is around twenty minutes and gorgeous, passing vineyards and sneaking glimpses of the water through cliffs. 

Once you get there you can order mattresses and umbrellas on the beach which is usually around 25 euros each (around 30 dollars). This picture above is taken from the restaraunt which is right on the beach. The food here is great and there are two sides to chose from. Our first day here we ate at the Nioulargo side which is the typical menu you would find on a beach club here while the other side, Kailargo is an asian menu. 

While eating a magician came to our table and performed some amazing tricks that I honestly have no idea how he did. Also at some point the owners enormous dog, Canel came walking over. She was the size of a small bear but a friendly giant and followed us to our chairs at the beach when we were done. 

 Since we basically closed down the beach, here is a photo from the very end of the day, when all the mattresses and people are gone.

Fourth of July was another crazy day in St. Tropez, celebrated on Moorea beach. We rode with our friends on their sailboat to get to the beach, a change from driving, and a great way to see all the insane yachts anchored outside the beach. On our way in we passed this one which actually had a slide attached to it, because of course simply jumping in would be too much. 

After we anchored and got our bags we loaded onto the "water taxi" boat that transfers people from their boats or mega yachts to the beach club. This is a picture from the end of the day as we were leaving, you cant really see it but the man in the boat was wearing some sort of cave man outfit.

As we noticed when we got to the beach their idea of Fourth of July celebrating was a little different from ours. 

 There were a ton of people dressed as famous American icons such as Obama, football players, a Native American, and I'm not really sure who this guy was...

 I honestly could not tell who half of them were but they were handing out flyers for a party that night.

 This beach was a crazy party that day! The DJ stepped up his music, people were dancing on tables, and there was a group of teens decked out in American stripes smoking and drinking.

 After we ate lunch we decided to rent a paddle boat since going in the actually sea was a little risky after they put this sign up. For some reason this year there were jellyfish every where we went! They mostly stayed either in the extreme shallows or deep and were fun to spot in the water as long as you were a safe distance away from them.

This was the second day my brother, our friends, and I had rented a paddle boat so we had the drill down. The day before we had accidentally drifted too far to the left from the current and had to be towed back by a motor boat which was actually a great ride!

In order to get this boat we had to walk past a semi nude beach which was really not what I wanted to see after what happened a couple of days before. I walked straight onto a total nudist beach filled with old people. It took three naked people walking by to convince me that it wasn't just a coincidence and sent me running back to our beach. 

Anyways back to this day, we rented the boat and made our brothers paddle most of the way. In this picture you cant see the insane yachts but a little farther out, to where I insisted we go, there were plenty. It was fourth of July and everyone who owned a huge boat brought it out to show off. 

This included Zac Efron. According to the rumors he had rented the ECLIPSE yacht (the largest in the world) for two million euros a week. I don't know if thats true but what I do know to be true is that he ate at Club 55 that day, the beach we had canceled our reservation to. This was frustrating! But I did get a picture of his yacht... I am almost positive it is the one with the huge grey component on the top. 

By the time we got back to shore, people had abandoned their chairs to go dancing. You cant see too well in this video since I wasn't close enough, but its a glimpse at what was going on! 

 As the day came to an end we took the sailboat back to our houses in Port Grimaud. It was the perfect day and a great way to complete it with the sailing. Here is a picture I took from the sailboat looking back, into the sun, at the beaches.

Here is another huge yacht we passed on the way back with three surrounding "little" boats. 

And here is one of my favorite shots of St.Tropez in the gorgeous sunset lighting. 

XOXOXOXO Rana