The Market

Quiet is a noise never heard in St. Tropez. During the days the port is bustling with artists and tourists and the rich & famous. After sunset, the night brings all sorts of miscreants – the young and restless, the party hoppers, the wealthy looking to be seen in the hottest nightclubs. But Tuesday and Saturday mornings promise a constant and loud buzz of trampling footsteps, strained shouts of screaming vendors, and crisp jingling of exchanging money. It has been said that the market in the place de lises, the heart of St. Tropez, is the best outdoor market in Provence.



Who could argue? Thing of an entire park filled with tent-like stands displaying the shop’s best of the best – their nicest produce and meats, the best-made desserts and pastries, the finest olive oils and herbs de Provence. You can find anything from homemade soap to Christian Dior purses, bathing suits and clothes to watches and jewelry, pet collars to pottery. Everything and anything is for sale, and all the locals and tourists push and holler their way through the mob to buy whatever treasure they’ve discovered. If you look hard enough, you can find the most surprising things buried under an odd mess of flea-market finds. It’s quite the experience.



After spending some three hours wandering the many twists and turns of the market, we returned to the cabanon by the beach to drop of my newly purchased thank you gifts (an adorable little blue lamp with tiny sea shells speckled all over it and a mat to wipe the sand off your feet that read, in French, “welcome to my little house by the sea”) and to finish cleaning. We enjoyed an exquisite Provencal meal that we picked up at the market of ratatouille, tomatoes stuffed with spinach and cheese and ham and other mysteriously delicious foods, and quiche. Yummy.

Afterwards we made a quick stop at Ramatuelle to pick up a cell phone mailed to me from eBay. I had a very fluent conversation with the mailman (who recognized me as the crazy lady who came every day last week to pick up a package that never came) and, because I’m dressed very French today and speaking the language, he took the time to help me locate my missing mail from the States. Apparently it’s been relocated to some tiny town near Toulon because they couldn’t find my house it’s so far in the middle of nowhere. But my new friend, the mailman, told me to just have them send the package to the Ramatuelle bureau du poste and he’d take care of it.

I spoke some more French to Alberte, the very sweet caretaker of chez Michel. She gave me some great advice and I gave her the keys to the cabanon; I’ve noticed that my key ring is shrinking rapidly. There was a time when I had the keys to chez Michel, the keys to the cabanon, the keys to the car, and the keys to the mailbox and I had, with the generous blessings of friends and family, full responsibility of and access to all of the above. However, I passed up the keys to chez Michel to my father when he came, I said goodbye to the cabanon when I regained a bed in the big house atop the mountain, I’ll have to give the car keys to Sara (a French cousin) upon her arrival in two weeks, and though I may be the only one receiving mail at the moment, I’ll have to pass on the key as soon as an actual owner of this house arrives. I gotta get me a scooter or I’ll be left with naught but a keychain…

But that’s for another day. Right now I’m way more concerned with having some espresso and tarte-tropezian (another treasure from the market) by the view.

= )

B told me today that he liked my smile more nowadays. I was happier, and my smile showed it. He said he hadn’t seen me smile like this for years.



Duh. I’m living in the French Riviera. Hahha