A series of articles describing our cruise around the Western Mediterranean with Island Cruises on their ship, the Island Star. Our Itinerary will be: Palma, Majorca > Day at Sea > Messina, Sicily > Naples, Italy > Livorno, Italy > Toulon, France > Barcelona, Spain > Palma, Majorca.
Each article can be accessed by clicking or tapping the photographs below. A link at the end of each article will bring you back to this index page.
Thursday 10 July 2008. The excursion to St Tropez and Port Grimaud has come to a close and the coach returns us to Toulon, where the Island Star is moored.
Toulon has been a port since the 1490s. Perhaps it's strangest episode came in 1543 when the Ottoman Admiral Barbarossa was invited to winter his fleet there by King Francis I. The residents of Toulon were forced to leave so that the Ottoman personnel could live in their homes. I bet that went down well...
To the east we watched as a bank of thick fog approached. Despite getting steadily closer, for some reason it came to a halt just behind the blocks of flats or apartments.
Sail-away time came and we slid out from the dock and made our way towards the main channel to the exit from the port.
Toulon remains the home port of the French Mediterranean Fleet and the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. Following the French Revolution, Toulon rebelled against the Revolutionaries and invited the British Fleet to harbour there in 1790. A siege of Toulon followed in 1793 during which the French forces including a certain Colonel Bonaparte forced the withdrawal of the British. As part of their withdrawal the British succeeded in destroying the French Fleet, blowing up the town's arsenals to prevent their falling into enemy hands and evacuated some 14,877 Toulon residents. The remainder were left to flee, suffering the indiscriminate firing of the victorious army who deemed them traitors. A further estimated 700-800 Royalists were shot or bayonetted afterwards.
The Island Star approaches the exit channel from the port, having to sail through the bank of thick fog to do so.
The evening's activities onboard included a special party for previous cruisers.
It did not include any spectacular wins on the machines in the casino...
Somehow the week had almost gone and tomorrow would be our last day in a port of call so we made the most of the serenity of being at sea. The sunset that night was particularly spectacular and we spent some time out on the deck, watching until the sun disappeared. We've found on previous trips that sunset or twilight is a good time for spotting dolphins. We kept watch for any tell-tale spouts of spray but nothing. Then we spotted more shadows than usual and had just voiced our wonders when a grey head suddenly popped up vertically from the waves to briefly check us over before it was gone again. And that... was that!
Thursday 10 July 2008. Ah... St Tropez! The name conjures up glamour, luxury, the rich and famous. Will it live up to the image?
We have moved on now to the French Riviera. The Island Star docked in Toulon where we got off the ship and boarded a coach for the 90-minute ride to St Tropez. One passenger felt aggrieved at this... "90 minutes without a toilet stop?!?" He was a bit eccentric anyway - we had noticed him a couple of times on the boat wearing the most bizarre clothes you've ever seen.
I swear he was dressed as Robinson Crusoe one night...and there are no fancy dress nights on the Island Star... Can we carry on? Well yes, we're going to anyway as the French guide has merely stared at him and said "That is correct..." We were on the front seat and my French is just about good enough to understand the driver saying "I think he should have gone before we left...!" I did learn some new swear words as a motorbike cut us up!
And so we reached St Tropez. Again we dispensed with the walking tour and set off to walk from where the coach dropped us along the coast and into St Tropez itself.
We admired all the boats - there were indeed some luxury millionaire-only type yachts. We walked to the far end of the harbour wall and then decided to get a bite of lunch as this was our only full-day tour of the week. We found a nice pizzeria and ordered a couple of pizzas.
The loo was an experience for Fran as there were two toilets opposite each other. One had no light and no window. The other had no lock. She waited for the one with no lock and sat jamming her foot against the door. When she came out, a bloke was sitting on the loo opposite and had left the door wide open so he could see...
A few artists had set up stalls along the harbour. This one specialised in boats floating in a red sea and sky - quite effective actually - monochrome naked females with robotic joints and the odd realistically coloured landscape.
We had a look around the shops to have a laugh at the prices. All the big name high-end fashion shops were there. A half-recognised famous face (which looked much younger than her arms...) came out of one, glanced at me and hurried on.
We looked at several collections of price tags with too many zeroes and finally bought a fridge magnet.
We saw quite a few of these cars. I'm afraid I mistook them for mini mokes as made in the 1960s and used in TVs cult hit The Prisoner. Perhaps someone had bought a job lot and transported them here after the sixties were over? But since then, someone has commented on the photo at Flickr (now unavailable) that they are modern cars, based on a Citroen 2CV chassis. So they lose a number of glamour points for that then! Tres chic though! We made our way back onto the coach and then waited for ten minutes past the time for a couple to roll up. They claimed to have got lost but they were not exactly hurrying back...
