Nice To St. Tropez
May 11th, 2003, 02:26 AM
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Nice To St. Tropez
I just got back from 10 days visiting my daughter in Nice. We took the train to places along the Riviera, and here is a tip for St Tropez. You have to take the train from Nice to St Raphael. Then you board a bus at the station for St Tropez. However, as you get closer and closer to St Tropez, the traffic gets quite heavy. In the summer months, the last miles are "bumper to bumper". Here is a tip. In St Raphael, get a bus ticket to St Maxime. It's one of the towns you bus through anyway. There is a ferry from St Maxime to St Tropez that is a beautiful 15 minute ride. It saves you litterally hours sitting on the bus, and is only a couple Euros. (3 or 5 maybe). That is about the same amount you save on the bus ticket. No need for reservations. And the boat leaves St Tropez every 30 minutes or so back to St Mxime, where you pick up the bus back to the train station, and on back to Nice. It was a much longer journey than we had imagined, although just gorgeous. Next time we would stay the night in St Tropez. Even if you have a car, we were told to drive to St Maxime and then board the ferry to St Tropez, to avoid the traffic and save hours idling in your car in the hot sun.
May 12th, 2003, 07:16 AM
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We took the noon train to St Raphael (maybe 1.5 hours or so), connected to the bus at the train station, (only a 10 minute wait), and rode the bus into St Tropez. We SHOULD have exited the bus in St Maxime, and boarded the boat. The bus leaves you off in St Maxime just across the street from the harbor. However, even in April, the last leg of the bus from St Maxime took at least another l.5 hours or so while the boat would have been 15 minutes! I think it took us a total of about 4.5 hours. We corrected our mistake on the way back. We boarded the boat for St Maxime (which leaves every 15 or 30 minutes), walked to the bus stop (which was right there), boarded the bus which comes every 30 minutes or so, and rode to the train station in St Raphael and then on to Nice. We SHOULD have started out earlier if we wanted to do the trip in one day, AND, we should have taken the boat both ways. ALSO, almost every "full service" restaurant in St Tropez closes down for the afternoon hours. So when we finally got there and were starving, and wanted to try a recommended restaurant, they all were closed. However, the "bar type" outside restaurants along the harbor were all open. PS. The price you save on the bus ticket about makes up for the boat. Even though we spent more time than necessary getting there, the ride was gorgeous the whole way. And the small towns along the way were so lovely. The boat ride was gorgeous too, as you can imagine.
