It was suppose to be a visit to Saint-Tropez, France, but a look out from the balcony of our room said there might be a problem. I haven’t spent that many days at sea, but I was able to tell it was gosh darn windy and this could cause a problem for our planned stop. Turns out our ship isn’t really designed to dock in 50 mph winds unless it’s really, really important. Unfortunately for us, a 10 hour stop in Saint-Tropez wasn’t really, really important. So the captain called up Villefranche-sur-Mer to see if they were open and if we could visit. Turns out most tourist towns love when a ship drops off a 1,000 or so people looking to spend money in their city. So instead of a sea day, we were to visit Villefranche-sur-Mer.

File this under you can’t judge a book by it’s cover. One might think the colorful paint job on the Welcome Hotel was a indication that it might not be a four star hotel. But looking at the amenities the hotel provides, the only negative listed by guests was that there was no parking for private cars. If this photo showed the surrounding streets, you could see there really is not place to park cars.

The brightly colored Welcome Hotel in Villefranche, France

It’s hard to show what 50 mph winds look like on the open sea when you are 8 stories above it. But this is what those 50 mph winds do look like.

The 50 mile per hour winds on the Mediterranean prevented at stop Saint-Tropez, France.

Cour du ricin in Villefranche, France.

I don’t do selfies, I take photos of my reflection instead.

All the great photographers take a photo of their reflection when they visit Villefranche, France

It’s a nice town to visit for a couple hours, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to stop here.

View of town from the citadel - Villefranche, France

Sugar water and caffeine to keep going through the day.

If you spend the day walking around, sooner or later you will need some liquid refreshments to keep going.

Leave a Reply