A week relaxing in the Cote D’Azur, should be a lovely relaxing time right? Landing in Nice to pick up the rental car posed a major stumbling block. They wouldn’t give me hire car we’d booked and paid for on account of it appearing I’d held a drivers license less than six months, you need to have held one for 12 months. I’d traded in my Aussie license for a UK one in January as it was about to expire. After a disheartened appeal, I even called the DVLA in the UK and asked if they could help prove i’d held a license for more than a year. After a lengthy conversation it was a no sir, we don’t hold any details of your previous license history just whatever you see on your drivers license.

Closer inspection of the back of my license i noted it was dated “< 18/01/08" and thought I'd try it on. Found another lady who was aware of my situation and heard my case as I tried to explain the little AUS code on the license meant that i'd held one previously and exchanged it for a British one. The person next to her was also having a debacle with an older Australian guy who'd just had his license renewed. They both went out back and came back for a few minutes and came out saying we were both fine. Joy. If we didn't get the car i don't know what we would have done. I would have cried (i was close to despair as it was) and if i'd had any energy left gone postal or considered flying back to London.

Gigaro, our destination is 100km out of Nice and we were aiming for a 6pm pick up of the keys to our apartment. As usual with Sam and I in a car and directions required it soon escalated to violence. Tired + Hungry + Driving in a foreign country = bad bad combination. Things were going okay until we reached Saint Maxime when the printed directions became vague and useless. We drove through and around several times eventually turning back and starting over again and following the directions literally (or close as possible). It didn’t help, the directions were complete shit.

Sheer stupid luck found us on the road we needed and then we were faced with loads of traffic leading to St Tropez and then toward La Croix Valmer the main town 7 kms from our destination. I spied loads of fancy old cars and even a few formula 3 cars doing laps. Wasn’t helping us though. We were running late and the person we were picking keys off had to be out of there by 6:30pm. We got there in the nick of time and found our apartment, nice and clean with a little balcony looking out to sea and about 500m from it. Food and supplies were on our mind and we thought we’d try the local Spar (one of only two shops in town)... closed as we drove up to it. Nooooo! More luck in town managing to pick up a few things there for the morning.

Our apartment was in a very poorly lit private estate. We struggled finding the right cul de sac after dinner the first night. We took several wrong turns, backing out of one many dimly lit streets i almost drove us down a large ditch. Save for a very large shrub it would have ended in tears (again). An old german guy overheard me trying to do a burn out to get the car out of it’s precarious situation. He hopped in as we lifted and pushed the car from the rear getting it out of the ditch. We did find our way home. This was an overly long and troubled day, not how one should be starting of a lazy seaside holiday. Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination? No. Sometimes you want to just get somewere, kick your feet and with a seabreeze on your face and a glass of wine in hand.

Dinner at a beachfront restaurant with an italian slant, Couleurs Jardin, to us the most appealing restaurant along the small option. I had some lovely John Dory with polenta and a creamy saffron sauce for moi and pasta with truffles for madame. Both really tasty and a chocolate and fig fondant to finish things off. They also have a take away pizza stall out the front which we took advantage of a couple of nights when we were too lazy to cook. We had a final meal here too enjoying a tasty carpaccio of artichoke and an expertly deboned dourade (bream?).

As we’re in Provence, Rose seems the tipple of choice not something i often reach for but we try and keep it local. Lots of very local vineyards and often our selections were from vineyards literally up the road or ones we’d driven past to get in and out of town. They aren’t overly fruity sweet cordialish drops i often come across. Mostly the blends made with Syrah and Grenache some of my favourite grape varieties.

There is a weekly market in La Croix Valmer on Sunday. A fair bit of naff clothing and stuff and a good smattering of local produce. We stocked up loads of cheese, saucisson, fruit and veg. As artichokes are in season there were quite a few stalls selling an artichoke puree, lovely on fresh bread! We had such lovely produce available we ended up staying in most nights making simple meals of salads, veg and cheese. What is it about france where everywhere you go people are wandering around with fresh baguettes? i was constantly craving bread and we don’t even eat much normally!

We were certainly in the off season, Gigaro was almost eerily quiet. We were blessed with some good weather the first few days and mooched around on the beaches near by. There’s n ot much in the immediate vicinity, a long stretch of beach and a few hotels and restaurants (most of which were empty). There’s a national park around Cape Lardier so lost of unspolit little bays and beaches in hikeable distance to explore.

And hike we did, Sam took me on a 15km round trek from Plage Gigaro to Plage de Briande. An often tricky hike along cliff faces and up some dodgy paths. I was happy to reach the beach at the end, a gorgeous long sandy strip that was quite empty. We did get stuck toward the end behind a group of 37 hikers who continued on. A couple of hours on the beach and some serious dark clouds started appearing with thunder and lightening in its wake. We were miffed but with a possible 2 hour hike back we hurried away and got rained on rather heavily, luckily we didn’t washed away along the way as feared.

Weather took a bit of a turn so we didn’t get too much more lazing on the beach action. It did make us get up off our asses and explore the local area, what with having a car and all. Port Grimaud is a busy and rather joyless port filled with tourists. Its touted to be Venice-esque cos its surrounded by water and has little bridges, and a few restaurants but i didn’t like it.

St Tropez was around the corner and we thought we’d check out the beaches nearby. First i resent paying for parking at a beach and you had to everywhere along the 9km strip of beaches as most were occupied by hotels, restaurants and cheesie themed bars. The town itself wasn’t as awful as we thought though the port is a rather charmless and full of oversized boats though it would have made for great people watching.

The inland roads arond La Croix Valmer made for some fun mountain driving and there is the beautiful 10th century Monastary Chartreuse de la Verne perched on the mountainside. The Carthusian Nuns live and work there and produce artisinal products (available for purchase in the gift shop). It’s still under restoration and some parts done more lovingly than others.

La Garde-Freinet is a beautiful old town sitting on a mountain pass. It was so damn quaint and picturesque it almost made me sick!

The beaches around Plage du Debarquement to Cavalaire-Su-Mer and surrounds were pretty trashy. Its a nice drive along the coast westwards toward Toulon though.

We took the coastal road back to Nice before flying going through Cannes (pretty trashy and almost crass in a Vegas way, though again will have been great people watching). Some nice long strips of beaches on the way into town if you’re coming from the west. It was also similar heading toward Nice the beaches went from sandy to pebbly though nice long stretches of beaches.

Reaching the airport mid afternoon after doing a couple of laps of the carpark to return the car, we found our flight was delayed 4 hours. Easyjet were so kind as to give us 9 euro in vouchers each to spend on refreshments. This was rather typical of our luck with flights recently. Sam saw this as a chance to get in some more sun.

We ended up heading back into town to hang by the sea a few hours as the weather had cleared up. Had a quick spin through the Vieux Nice part of town, narrow windy streets with shops selling touristy stuff and a good smattering of bars and cafes. Wandered down Promenade de Anglais and sat on a beach catching some rays before grabbing dinner at a Lebanese restaurant.

It was a lovely and much needed break. Shame the weather was pretty crap though it was a blessing in a way too. So happy it wasn’t peak tourist season as beautiful and quiet as it was i’m sure it will have been heaving with tourists and i’m sure we wouldn’t have even bothered taking peeks at Canne & St Tropez, there were a great deal of German, Belgian and Swiss around Gigaro. Most disappointly though for all the big boats in the harbour we didn’t spot PDiddy once!

Photos here…