On our way to Mercantour and Alpi Maritimi National/Natural Parks we decided to visit St. Tropez, a place which as far as I saw looked quite pretty if you are more for nice architecture and fancy beaches…after all you are on the Cote d’Azur. St. Tropez is also known among others from the comedian Louis de Funes which I am sure you have seen at least one of his movies with the “Gendarmerie”, so if you are around that area it would be fun to visit from this point of view.

After passing the Massif de Maure with some stops to discover the nature and a climb to a cross and fort before Grimaud village, we headed to St. Tropez.

Cities have become quite scary for us since it takes so much time to drive through them, find a parking place and so on. Unfortunately most of the coast does not have any place that is not someone’s private property.

Thus, while heading towards Camarat Lighthouse, which seemed a bit more of a wild zone, we found the “Les Tournels”, a camping site which seemed suited for what we wanted. The small cottages and the wish of a nice long shower lured us to the reception. We soon discovered, after paying for one night…that actually…the French lady which spoke English quite well, didn’t understand us afterall…so instead of a cottage, we received a parking place with a pole that had electricity and access to the common toilets and showers…all this for the wonderful amount of 24 euro. Maybe we are just learning our way around the world with this type of travelling, but again, this was another thing that seemed very expensive for us. I do admit that the place itself was very nice.

To recover from this shock we continued our drive to the lighthouse and to the protected area called Cap de Camarat. This place which we were expecting to be more wild was nothing impressive, especially since there was a lot of dog poop around.

We headed back to the “Les Tournels”, to spend the night at the so expensive parking place that we paid for.

The next day, after our very expensive shower and sleeping in the car, again, we headed towards Mercantour and Alpi Maritimi National/ Natural Parks in the hope of seeing the Bearded Vulture. To make the journey more enjoyable we drove for a while on the French coast with a small detour at the Esterel Mountains. It is not a very high mountain but it is quite nice for driving and for cyclists. This is also a very great place for panoramic views over the Mediteraneea Sea.

Up there it was windy and hot and the vegetation for this time of year was not that interesting.

Since Monaco was so close, we thought would be nice to drive through it…

The Monaco Principality looked quite amazing for me, since I like to observe different architectural types.Unfortunately taking this route is time consuming. The destination for the day was Tende, at the border with Italy. Being quite late for any visiting we crossed the tunnel between France and Italy which is over 3 km long. We spent the night in Terme di Valdieri…well close to it anyway, since an avalanche that took place a few days earlier made it impossible to reach the village. This did not scare us, so we pulled the car in the parking close to the road blocking and spent the night under the clear sky…more specifically in the car, again.

The next day I had the opportunity to explore Tende and Saorge, two amazing villages/towns in France which impressed me so much that the pouring rain did not stop me to run up and down the streets of these places. I will get back to you on that with a seperate post and more photos.

You can also read more about the nature part of this trip on Cosmin’s Blog.