La Vie en Rosé: The South of France Diary

Gloria Steinem likens travel to sex. To quote directly from her new book, My Life on the Road, “[moving from place to place] is right up there with life-threatening emergencies and truly mutual sex as a way of being fully alive in the present.”

For the past decade, travel has served as my best medicine, a surefire way to reboot my brain and move forward as a tweaked version of myself. Following a few shitty weeks – fine, months – this was exactly what I was seeking when I galvanized a group of friends into an impromptu South of France romp, appropriately monikered #EuroMess2018.

And, boy, what a glorious mess it was!

Jour 1

6am: I arrive to the Saint Petersburg airport feeling READY. I have a suitcase of skimpy sundresses and a surplus of anxious energy to convert into rosé-infused fun. I know that our first destination, St. Tropez, is all Zimmerman dresses and pseudo-hippie one percent-ers, and yet it still has a cool side too, right? I can just see myself, in a mere few hours, retracing Bardot’s old stomping grounds in a quest for some bygone 60’s glamour..

Goals

I get a coffee and sit down at a Starbucks by my gate. People start boarding, but I’m Brigitte and I’m too cool to queue. At 7:45, I finally approach the gate, only to realize that they are finishing boarding a flight for Vienna. My flight, which had been changed to the neighboring gate, is long gone.

I repeat, MY FLIGHT IS LONG GONE.

I feel a current of stupidity rushing through my body, threatening panic attack. I run through the airport half-sobbing, simultaneously telling myself that I am alive, and my dog is alive, and at least I didn’t run somebody over by a car. (If this sounds weird, you’ve clearly never seen me drive.)

I go online and find another flight for the same day, which costs double the one that’s currently making its way to Nice. For $100, you can upgrade to business. I decide that it will not be the day that I missed my flight – instead, it will be the day I flew business for the third time in my life!

I am disappointed to discover that the Pulkovo 2 business lounge smells like my elementary school cafeteria. Later, on the plane, I am just as disappointed to discover that I have severe psychological issues: instead of enjoying my brush with luxury, all I feel is a ton of Jewish guilt and a need to work harder to make up for this financial catastrophe.

4pm: The Zurich airport, where I have my layover, smells like money. I can’t decide whether this makes me feel better or worse, so I just quench my inner debate with champagne.

6pm: The landing to Nice is one fine treat for the soul. I see my old dorm by the port and remember the man who used to sit on the balcony across the street in nothing but his underwear and watch us study. In my shaky emotional state, even that memory seems poignant.

8pm: My friends whisk me off in our rental Skoda, and, two hours later, we are pulling into St Tropez. It’s so pretty! And pink! And everybody looks like a shiny pedigreed stallion! And how are they that all that tanned?!

10pm: Dinner at Sauvageonne, a chill spot that is made to look like a Tiki bar. I look at the menu and laugh, because I realize that from now on, everything will cost me double, even at a Tiki bar. I ask the girls to aim for a good “price per calorie”ratio, they almost kill me.

The music grows louder. Every few minutes, flocks of French men dressed in costumes borrowed from different cultures run out to sing people Happy Birthday. There are Native Americans, African tribes, French gendarmes… It feels like the Disney world of cultural appropriation, but I dance in my seat anyway.

French gendarme in motion..

By the Tiki toilette shack, I get approached by a small orange man who introduces himself as a Very Famous Designer and informs me that I MUST come to his table. He barely reaches my chin. I politely decline.

After dinner he finds us again and leads us to us to an area populated with lithe young French women who all look like Jeanne Damas. They give us bises that feel like they are meant to electrocute us. I’m confused – do they all actually like the Very Famous Designer? Or is he their uncle / godfather and they are just being protective?

As I’m trying to figure out the situation, the VFD asks me where we are staying.

“Oh, by the port!” I smile.

“Okay, in the morning you and your friends, you move into my house!”

He sounds quite serious, like he believes his own BS. I decide to out-French him and tell him that I like things to be “organic” and we must be friends first. He seems impressed with this and agrees.

I steal a Sauvageonne hat, which I hold on to for the rest of the trip.

Jour 2

8am: I wake up and go for a run. There’s an Hermès store, a Dior cafe, and about twenty 70-million-dollar yachts lining the port. Basically it’s the GDP of a small country in one tiny stretch of Côte d’Azur. Everybody seems on top of one another and I wonder why rich people like to show off in front of one another – what happened to “fuck you” money and the pinnacle of luxury that is SPACE?!

11am: Clearly, I don’t understand the rich. Over lunch at Le Senequier (the Café Flore of St. Tropez) everybody is piled on top of one another once again. There are lots of silicon body accoutrements, but at least the tarte tropézienne is incredible.

5pm: We find a little plage that I use as my bathtub.

At some point, we receive a text from our friend the Very Famous Designer.

Can’t. Make. This. Shit. Up.

Massages aside, it’s not even that terrible. In fact, it is probably a fun invitation to a bohemian enclave filled with elephants and giraffes and young Jeanne Damas lookalikes and a 50+ man who makes an occasional pass at you but doesn’t push further. It’s not a terrible experience and, with a little diplomacy, I will probably make a friend. But I have enough friends and enough years of this nonsense behind me. So, non.

10pm: Dinner at Epi 1959, where we are the only patrons. How wonderful! Now this is luxury.

Stepfords of St. Tropez!

1am: We decide to live life to the fullest and head to the “legendary” Les Caves nightclub, which looks and feels exactly like what I imagine Atlantic City to be like. Over at the neighboring VIP at the Byblos Hotel, 70 kids are lined up for what appears to be a teen party.

I feel like a creep looking at their young, stupid faces and tell my friend that I could easily be their mother. One of the little shits overhears me and screams “Yes you could be!” His girlfriend, all nineteen and ninety pounds, laughs in appreciation. I get a NY Times and decide to focus on the cerebral instead.

Take that, teenage wasteland!

Jour 3

We are leaving St. Tropez! But, first, a trip to Club 55 to say hello to friends. There are way too many people and linen shirts per square meter. I feel so dizzy that I almost fall into a three-foot tray of fish. The waiter almost stabs me. I’m not kidding – it’s like the sea bass is his child and I have just threatened its safety.

Somebody approaches us – it’s the Very Famous Designer! He’s so orange that he could coin a new shade, like an Hermès orange but darker. He is a bit guarded, which I assume has something to do with our massage résistance. Oh well.

We head west to an idyllic little town called Sanary-sur-Mer to spend the last few days with my best friend and her French brood. Over dinner, I tell her all about St. Tropez and the Very Famous Designer and show her his text. She tells me that the problem is me, because I somehow find these people. Mean! Maybe she’s the one who needs a massage!

Sanary

Jour 4-8

The last four days are heaven. Small town life agrees with me. The days start early and are filled with simple things done right: a morning market, fresh figs and tomatoes, buttery croissants, wine at noon, turquoise beaches, happy children, good friends.

There is a clarity here that makes it easy to reaffirm one’s priorities, to unravel them from the tchotchkes and to remember what matters. I find myself a café to work at and spend morning chatting with the staff, or just watching the bustling retiree scene that reassures me that the Golden Years are not to be feared. I swim a little. I think a lot. One morning, I walk into a church and just sit there, listening to music, and I suddenly feel a sense of gratitude that I hadn’t realized I was missing.

I acknowledge, yet again, everything I am driven by and everything that I’m not. It is good to know yourself. To occasionally test yourself and take yourself out of your comfort zone, but to ultimately come back to you.

And now, back to Gloria Steinem. “The road is messy in the way that real life is messy. It leads us out of denial and into reality, out of theory and into practice, out of caution and into action, out of statistics and into stories—in short, out of our heads and into our hearts.”