Note: St. Tropez is pronounced "San Tropay". It is a rich people playground (think lots of yachts and vacation homes) in Southeast France.

I woke up around 7:30 am due to the huge noise anchoring makes.

Food is important. So.. for breakfast, I had Swiss Muesli (so novel! so yummy!), prunes (oh, sorry, I meant dried plums - as the industry now prefers to be referred to as), dried apricots, raisin bread, belgian waffle, milk, and 1 bite of one of my sisters' apple turnover. Needless to say, I was quite full after that. :-P

So after breakfast, we headed to shore on a tender (little life boat types that bring people to shore when the harbor is not deep enough to let the big ship in).

Triangle Tables along the dock:

We got lost a little so I used some French. :-) We ran into this guy who didn't really speak English - only French or Spanish - that's why. But chances for French usage came up later too.

First we went to the Office du Tourisme to see what cool things were close by. Then we waled to Le Marche des Lices (Flea Market). What a disgusting name. Anyhow, it really wasn't a flea market because they were mainly selling new stuff. Bakeries, Postcards, Jewelry, Watches, Herbs, Nuts, Meat, Veggies, Kitchen stuff...

My sister Francesca got a very nice looking necklace.. for only 2 Euros. From looking at it, you'd think it could be 10 Euros at least.

My mom got a lot of French Pastry.

It was funny cuz my mom took French in high school but doesn't want to risk saying the wrong thing now. So, she keeps talking in English. Me, I just babble in French and hope it works. I mean, even in Portugal, I attempted my butchered Spanish because Spanish is very close to Portuguese. Except the word for Thank You (Obrigado vs. Gracias).

I digress. So my mom wanted some napkins. Apparently, the woman behind the counter knew a little English but not enough to know what a napkin was. Suddenly, it dawned on me so I said "Serviette" and she understood and all was good :-)

Sister by a bumpy tree:

We also went up to the Citadel. We had to pay admission. French came in handy again. There were 4 of us. My mom held up four fingers. I said "Trois etudiantes" since I noticed the student discount. :-) I beat the woman's calcualor in figuring out the total price. Hehe, yay! My brain is still working even though I'm on vacation. Granted, that was like 2 times 4 or I forget what.

It was a great view from up there. At the top of the hill looking out into the sea.

I saw some people filming for a Rolex commercial or something. There was going to be a party for Rolex people later. French came in handy again when I had to inquire about it.

Peacocks in the tree:

Later shopping in the random streets, my mom was interested in this cool zipper expandable purse. But it was too expensive. Trop Cher. 100 Euros. It did not look like 100 Euros. It did not even look 100 dollars. I'd think it was like $30. But then again, I don't know anything about those brand names. We didn't buy it.

At the end of it, my feet were dead. We had walked around a lot... on cobblestone roads and in narrow alleyways and narrow sidewalks. Not made for the fat American... or two way traffic. I took lots of photos.

Artistic moment - a split second later, someone stepped in front and the little kid had run off.

One of the many photos.... I found quite amusing. The French are unashamed, or less Victorian than the Americans when it comes to public availability of reproductive stuff. (look at what's written vertically on the blue dispenser).

Here's another photo:

Back to the boat... I ate non-dairy Pineapple Soft-serve. I like soft-serve. Too bad the machine broke later on in the trip. Afterwards, I wrote some postcards and bought some stamps. Got this oversized ugly Spanish stamp. I like the Portuguese stamp better. (It had a cute otter on it).

I also picked up my sister's purse that she lost from the front desk. I was surprised no one stole any thing from it. I suppose maybe if she had Euros. But then again, the boat was full of rich people so maybe they didn't feel the need. Or maybe someone was just nice :-) Yay nice people!

Then I went to a boring talk on our next port of call, Menorca. Well, topic-wise was interesting. But lecturer delivery format... I'd say fall asleep-able. Not unlike certain bad classes *aheme60ahem* I've heard lectures at before. I didn't go to so many of these later on because I found out that the lecturer hadn't really even been to these places before. She just did research. Well, I can do research too :-) Yay Guidebooks!

Dinner... drum roll please!

1. Watermelon Balls
2. Three Berry Soup (Cold, like a smoothie!)
3. House Salad - changes every day
4. Vegetable Pot Pie
5. Cappuccino

Anyhow, I tried to go sleep around midnight but my sisters were hyper that evening and kept talking and giggling. Ah well, good that they were happy.

Mahon, Menorca (Minorca), Espana (Spain)