If I Were Going...: The French Riviera

The beautiful Côte d'Azur

Next on the agenda: sunshine, water, glamor! Ooooh la la, we were headed for the French Riviera, known in French as the (much more musical) Côte d'Azur.

Looking for sunshine and sea breezes

Our drive there was lovely. We couldn’t believe that GPS routed us up a hill and right through another hillside town called Bonnieux that looks across to yet another called LaCoste. See the drive here.

LaCoste from Bonnieux

The hills and churches and mountains and vineyards of Provence are gorgeous. I wish we had stayed longer.

But, we were off to another adventure, this time at the newly booked hotel in Les Issambres (as you will recall, Scott had nixed Nice). I had researched Nice extensively, but knew virtually nothing about Les Issambres except that it was less frenetic than the eastern Riviera and it was kind of near Saint-Tropez.

Les Issambres

The Riviera

The Riviera has no official boundary, but it is considered to be the coastal area of France from roughly Saint-Tropez to the Italian border.

Saint-Tropez

The Principality of Monaco is a semi-enclave within the region, surrounded on three sides by France and fronting the Mediterranean. My original plan would have taken us there, but this new route did not.

Riviera is an Italian word that originates from the ancient Ligurian territory. Côte d'Azur is originally a nickname given to the County of Nice after its annexation in 1860, because the climate was similar to that of the north of Italy, even in winter, with "a sky as blue as its sea."

Living up to the hype

This coastline was one of the first modern resort areas. It began as a winter health resort for the British upper class at the end of the 18th century, primarily for patients suffering from tuberculosis, known then as consumption. The French historian Paul Gonnet wrote that, as a result, it was filled with "a colony of pale and listless English women and listless sons of nobility near death.”

A private home across from the beach

World War I brought down many of the royal houses of Europe and altered the nature and the calendar of the French Riviera. Greater numbers of Americans began arriving, with business moguls and celebrities eventually outnumbering aristocrats. The High Society scene moved from a winter season to a summer season. While Americans were largely responsible for making summer the high season, French fashion designer Coco Chanel made sunbathing fashionable after she acquired a striking tan there during the summer of 1923.

Coco Chanel; Photo: SummerSkin

In the first half of the 20th century, the Côte d'Azur was frequented by artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Francis Bacon, Edith Wharton, Somerset Maugham and Aldous Huxley, as well as wealthy Americans and Europeans.

When Germany invaded France in June 1940, the British colony was evacuated to Gibraltar and eventually back to Britain. American Jewish groups helped some of the Jewish artists living in the south of France, such as Marc Chagall, escape to the United States. In August 1942, 600 Jews from Nice were rounded up by French police and sent to death camps. In all, about 5,000 French Jews from Nice perished during the war.

World War II; Photo: French Side Travel

The Cannes Film Festival was launched in September 1946, marking the return of French cinema to world screens. The release of the French film Et Dieu... Créa la Femme (And God Created Woman) in 1956 was a major event for the Côte d'Azur, making an international star of Brigitte Bardot, and making an international tourist destination of Saint-Tropez, particularly for the new class of wealthy international travelers called the jet set. Bardot still lives there.

Et Dieu... Créa la Femme

The French Riviera is one of the mildest locations in the world for its latitude because the Gulf Stream and the Mediterranean Sea both moderate temperatures, particularly in winter. The region boasts a long growing season and has lots of exotic flora such as citrus and palms. It has more than 300 days of sunshine per year.

We certainly had sunshine

The Côte d'Azur has 71 miles of coastline and beaches, 18 golf courses, 14 ski resorts and 3,000 restaurants. Marinas dot the coastline. According to the Côte d'Azur Economic Development Agency, each year the Riviera hosts 50 percent of the world's mega yacht fleet, with 90 percent of all mega yachts visiting at least once in their lifetime.

One of the smaller yachts; Photo: Scott Stevens

Before all of this glamor, the area was remote and impoverished, known mostly for fishing, olive groves and the production of flowers for perfume.

With a total population of more than 2 million, the French Riviera is home to 163 nationalities with 84,000 foreign residents, although estimates of the number of non-French nationals living in the area are often much higher. Its largest city, Nice, has a population of about 350,000.

Interestingly, the Côte d'Azur is home to a high tech and science park and a research and technology center. The region has 35,000 students, of whom 25 percent are working toward a doctorate.

It's not just pretty shorelines, but the shorelines are pretty

Among its sparkling waters and glitzy resorts are also the ruins of Roman towns, monuments, walls, amphitheaters and ancient cathedrals.

Some historical buildings in Saint-Tropez

Les Issambres, where we stayed, stretches along five miles of inlets and fine sandy beaches. Its incarnation as a resort took place in the 1930s with the development of the Hotel La Résidence. Our hotel, Logis Hotel Le Provencal, looked out to a nice beach across the street and had two restaurants, the fancier one featuring seafood.

Another nice place

We spent the afternoon we arrived doing laundry at a laundromat next door. I had washed a lot of things by hand, but Scott had a big pile if dirty clothes. It was pretty hot and miserable. Definitely not how I wanted to spend my time at the glamor capital of southern France. But, it was a three-week trip and we needed clean clothes.

After we finished our chores, we went across the street to the beach. We ended up only wading in the cool water.

But now I have put my feet in the Mediterranean; Photo: Scott Stevens

When researching the trip, I though briefly about bringing my snorkel gear, but that would have been a lot to carry for a brief slice of our visit.

This didn't seem like a skorkeling beach, anyway; Photo: Scott Stevens

That evening, we ate the hotel’s fancier restaurant. It was fine, but pricey. We wished we had done something simpler, but it was convenient.

Scott having breakfast under the trees at the hotel restaurant

Saint-Tropez and More

The next day, we drove east along some winding narrow roads in the mountains above the coastline that were surprisingly steep for the coast.

I risked my life crossing and standing on the side of the narrow road to get this shot

We ended up at the harbor in Saint-Tropez.

The gorgeous harbor

An internationally known seaside resort, it is renowned principally because of the influx of artists of the French New Wave in cinema and the Yé-yé movement in music.

An artist had set up canvases by the harbor; Photo: Scott Stevens

It later became a resort for the European and American jet set and tourists. It is famous for glamorous beach clubs, mega yachts and a charming old fishing quarter.

Saint-Tropez

The marina was absolutely packed with some of the most phenomenal yachts I have even seen. Lots of them.

One of many yachts

It was a pretty day. Why were they all just parked? We saw a few leave the harbor, but it seemed that we were looking at billions of dollars worth of vacant boats.

Yachts and fishing boats

We also saw a few cruise ships

After ogling the mega yachts (and some much more modest boats), we walked around the charming narrow streets of the village. We are both suckers for narrow winding streets and St. Tropez delivered.