Toulon ended up standing in for Sanary-sur-Mer on our itinerary, a last-minute swap the harbor master made when the winds picked up too much for safe mooring at our original stop. Toulon sits just seven miles up the coast from Sanary, so every excursion we’d booked stayed exactly the same. We were signed up for the Saint-Tropez and Port Grimaud tour, and honestly, the swap turned into one of the best days of the trip.
🚌 The Ride to Saint-Tropez
We boarded our tour bus for what our guide said would be about a ninety-minute ride through some genuinely picturesque countryside. Along the way she filled the time well: a rundown of the local flora, a bit of regional history, and a proper introduction to Saint-Tropez itself.
A Quick History of Saint-Tropez
It’s easy to forget, standing in front of all those superyachts, that Saint-Tropez spent most of its history as an unassuming fishing village. Its roots go back to the Romans, who built villas here after invading the region in 31 BC, and the town later became a fortified port in the 15th century, with a citadel built to guard the coast from Spanish attacks. It stayed a quiet military and fishing outpost for centuries. Everything changed in the late 1800s when painter Paul Signac washed up here seeking shelter from a storm, fell in love with the light, and brought a wave of artists in his wake. Coco Chanel and other fashionable Parisians followed in the 1920s. But the real turning point was 1956, when Roger Vadim filmed “And God Created Woman” here with a young Brigitte Bardot. The film made Saint-Tropez an overnight international sensation, and the yachts, the boutiques, and the jet set have never really left since.
With that history in mind, our guide walked us past the harbor, packed with yachts of every size imaginable. It was the lifestyles of the rich and famous, on full display before 10 a.m. From there we climbed into the old town, meticulously kept and lined with high-end boutiques of every kind. As the morning went on, the town filled in fast, families pouring off their yachts to shop and grab lunch.
⛪ The Church and the Market
We passed the Église Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption, the ochre-and-sienna bell tower that’s basically Saint-Tropez’s signature, visible from almost anywhere in town. The current building dates to 1784, an Italian Baroque replacement for an older 16th-century church that had become unstable. Inside, wood carvings and statues from the early 1800s survive, along with a bust of Saint-Tropez himself, the town’s patron saint, who gets paraded through the streets every year during the Bravades festival.
From there we wandered past the market area, fresh fish and vegetables laid out for the day, and kept climbing until we reached a lookout with a gorgeous view over the water. A few promising-looking restaurants sat right at the overlook, and Bob and I filed them away for lunch. We wound back down and around through more of the shops, picking up more of the town’s history along the way, until we landed back at the docks, where we were cut loose for a few hours on our own.
🍤 Lunch, Twice
Our first stop was the famous red-canopied café right on the docks, Sénéquier, for a Coke and some world-class people-watching. They weren’t serving lunch that day, so after about thirty minutes we headed back up toward the restaurants we’d spotted earlier at the top of town.
We settled in for a light lunch of beef carpaccio, burrata, and tomatoes, with a glass of wine and good bread. The spot was beautiful and blessedly quieter than the harbor scene below.
After lunch we took a different route back down to the meeting point, which showed us a whole other, more modern side of Saint-Tropez. I always drop a location pin at the meeting spot the moment we arrive, so finding our way back is never a guessing game. This route ran past ultra-luxury car dealerships and bigger, glossier stores, a completely different flavor from the boutique-lined lanes of old town. We made it back to the marina, boarded the bus, and waited for the rest of the group to filter in.
🛶 Port Grimaud: The Venice of Provence
Next stop was Port Grimaud, a seaside town built from scratch to look like a miniature Venice, canals running past nearly every home and shop. The whole place was the dream of one man, an Alsatian architect named François Spoerry, who bought up a mosquito-infested stretch of marshland at the bottom of the Gulf of Saint-Tropez in the early 1960s and spent three years fighting through permits before construction finally began in 1966. He wanted a village where every house could be reached by land or by sea, inspired by his travels around the Mediterranean and a childhood fascination with a model lake city he’d seen in a museum. It’s still nicknamed the Venice of Provence today, and the church at its center, Saint-François d’Assise, holds Spoerry’s own tomb along with stained glass windows by the op-art artist Victor Vasarely.
It was a genuinely charming town, though if I’m honest, it reminded us quite a bit of the canal communities you’d find along the coasts of Florida, just with nicer boats parked at the docks, though nothing at the over-the-top level of Saint-Tropez. A handful of gelato shops made for a welcome treat in the heat. Along the canals I poked through a string of tourist shops while Bob found a shady, quiet spot to wait it out. I picked up a few small things, mindful that our luggage space is already tight and we still have a long way to go.
Honestly, Port Grimaud was a nice place, but not a must-see, at least not for us. Worth the stop, not worth going out of your way for.
🚍 A Detour Through Toulon
The bus ride back to the ship ran a little long, but since we were ahead of schedule, our guide had the driver loop us through the city of Toulon itself and point out a few of its biggest landmarks along the way. Toulon is home to France’s largest naval base, a role it’s played since Henry IV founded the arsenal in the early 1600s, and it still shows: warships sat visible in the harbor, and the whole city has a purposeful, working-port energy rather than a resort one. That naval importance made Toulon a major target during World War II.
After France fell in 1940, the Vichy government kept much of the French fleet anchored right here, and when German forces moved in to seize it in November 1942, French sailors scuttled 73 of their own ships in the harbor rather than hand them over. The city was later hit hard by Allied bombing ahead of its liberation in August 1944, and much of the historic old town was destroyed in the process, which is why so much of what stands in Toulon today was rebuilt after the war rather than original.
Mont Faron rises up behind the city, the mountain that’s shielded Toulon’s harbor from wind and hostile eyes for centuries, and our guide pointed out the cable car that carries visitors up to a WWII memorial and sweeping views over the bay. We caught glimpses of the ornate 19th-century Opéra de Toulon and the old clock tower marking the entrance to the naval base as we rolled through, enough to tell us Toulon is a genuinely interesting city in its own right, even if today it was just scenery on the way back to the ship.
We made it back aboard with time to relax a bit before getting ready for sail away and dinner.
📝 Practical Notes
If high winds ever swap your Sanary-sur-Mer stop for Toulon, don’t worry, it’s a short hop up the coast and your excursions should stay intact. In Saint-Tropez, drop a pin at your meeting point the moment you arrive; the old town’s narrow lanes all start to look alike after a glass of rosé. And budget real time for lunch at the overlook restaurants above the port, quieter, better views, and a nice break from the harbor crowds below.
Related Posts
