It was going to cost us 11 euros a day to stay in St. Tropez. More than we have spent recently but then probably quite a cheap way to stay in this town. It was a beautiful sunny day (but not that warm) so after breakfast we had a long walk along the coast into the centre of St Tropez (it took us about 45 minutes). We were surprised by our first view of the town. Although there were some exepensive shops and you could not get away from the high class motor launches, yachts etc in the harbour we found it to be rather understated and not at all glitzy. maybe this is St Tropez out of season. It was a very French town, well maintained with some lovely properties partly hidden from view. Today there was a market in the Square selling a lot of local produce as well as fashion items. The Citadel has an imposing view on top of the hill; we walked up to it but it was closed for renovation until June so back down we came to wander through the narrow streets onto the main area of the Port. The boats there were magnificent and sent Mike off dreaming again. We splashed out on a coffee and cake at Senequier, a popular cafe that overlooked the harbour and enjoyed watching everyone walking by. 
Once we had finished exploring this part of St Tropez we went back to the van for lunch. We lazed around for a couple of hours; I had just started reading 'A Cat called Bob' and Mike was attending to the van but then decided to get on our bikes and explore the headland. We were out for 2.5 hours and went up and down the hills around the shoreline, we found Tahiti beach that attracts the stars in the summer but it was deserted today.
On our second day in this area we cycled to Sante Maxime which was about 17km away. It was a relatively easy cycle and Mike made sure we kept the pace up. We stopped off at the top an inlet to admire more boats in another marina and then following the coast road we arrived in Sante Maxime at 11.30pm. It was a pretty town although the centre was undergoing some major reconstruction work. We found a postbox for our postcards, bought some salad stuff and then went back to the front to eat our sandwiches. Mike then set a fast pace again and we arrived in St Tropez in about an hour: not a bad time for me to do 17K. We did not want to return to the van yet so we dawdled around the port area of St Tropez and sat down to enjoy an ice-cream. Mike had a lovely rich chocolate one and I had vanilla stuffed full of pecan nuts. It was one of the best ice creams I have ever had :). With tired legs (JK) we completed our journey and enjoyed a cup of tea. No peace for the wicked though. Mike revived, set out to clean all the external cupboards and then feeling slightly guilty I did some hand-washing and then settled down to a lazy afternoon doing my cross stitch. Thursday saw us leaving St. Tropez and onto Cannes. The weather started off cloudy and got worse so that it was raining heavily by the time we arrived in Cannes. What's more Cannes does not like motor homes so from about 5km out there were signs saying 'no waiting' for motorhomes with pictures of tow-away trucks. Nice to feel welcome! The tourist information office was right next door to the Congress Centre and site of the Film Festival. I jumped out whilst Mike toured round. The TI confirmed that there was no parking in the town and we would have to park outside and walk in. This was not an attractive prospect in the heavy rain. We did find one place to park where we were able to stop for lunch but then we decided to give Cannes up as a bad job and so after a couple of 'drive-throughs' the town we continued on in the direction of NICE.
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