A bit of history first (sorry, I can't help it):

The birth certificate of the town of Saint-Raphael dates from the 11th century with the romanesque church (wrongly but plausibly attributed to the Knights Templar) dedicated to the Archangel Raphael (nowadays église Saint Pierre / church Saint Peter). Before that, the area of Saint-Raphael had been for the Romans mostly a seaside suburban resort (already !) of Frejus (the town next door with many still-existing Roman remains) then it became a fishermen's village in the Middle Ages.

Napoleon made Saint-Raphael walk into history twice: once on 9th of October 1799 as he landed there on his way back from Egypt after escaping the English Navy (not a small task), the second time on 27th of April 1814 as he sadly departed on an English ship (the Undaunted!) for his first exile on the Island of Elba (between Corsica and Tuscany).

The train station was inaugurated in 1863 and the fact that Alphonse Karr (1908 - 1890), a French fashionable and witty writer (friend of Victor Hugo), settled there in 1865 suddenly made Saint-Raphael one of the favoured seaside and tourist resorts on the Mediterranean.

Charles Gounod (1808-1893) stayed there long enough to write his opéra "Roméo & Juliette" in 1867 and later his "Ave Maria" in 1885.

Today I still love how the old town of the Middle Ages survived the centuries (North of the rail tracks) and how the new town of the second half of the 19th century survived as well (South of the rail tracks), both 5mn walk from my flat. Some very beautiful villas from the late 1800s and early 1900s still remain and give to Saint-Raphaël a unique charm.

It was one of those villas up in the lush hillside of Saint-Raphaël that Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), together with his wife, Zelda (1900-1948) and daughter, Scottie, rented during the summer of 1924. His plan was to escape New York’s extravagant lifestyle that he could no longer afford and which distracted him from his work. Paradoxically, at a time where most of the Americans fled Prohibition to get drunk on a budget in France, Scott just wanted to sober up and get down to work on what he felt was his most profound book ever. He said he wanted « to write something new - something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned ». And that « something new » was… « The Great Gatsby »! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, « The Great Gatsby » was mostly conceived in Saint-Raphaël during the five months Francis Scott Fitzgerald stayed in the Villa Marie and he sent his manuscript to Scribner’s while he was there!

The Fitzgerald's venue to the French Riviera was no accident. They had previously met Gerald (1888-1964) and Sara (1883-1975) Murphy in Paris and the two couples got along really well. Before the Murphys, people traditionally wintered on the Riviera and summered at Deauville (in Normandy). The Murphys fell in love with Antibes and in 1923, while they were having their villa built (which they named Villa America), they convinced the owner of the Hotel du Cap (which still exists as a luxury hotel and restaurant) to exceptionally keep his hotel open in the summer just for them and their friends. It was a new and strange sight for locals to see that « lost generation » of Americans covering their bodies with banana oil and swimming under the burning sun at the « plage de la Garoupe ». The Fitzgeralds were the Murphys’ first guests but they were soon followed by Hemingway, Dos Passos, Picasso, Cole Porter and many others…

The Fitzgeralds came back to Saint-Raphaël in 1929 (they then stayed at the hotel Beau Rivage) but the Wall-Street crash soon brought them back to Paris, then back to America.

To make a long story short (as if you'd want that if you're still here), what's important to understand and acknowledge here is that Europeans' present sacrosanct ideal of a seaside summer vacation was born in the minds of a few high-spirited Americans!!! Isn't that something?

(I'm getting there...)

Well, first of all, there aren't too many foreign tourists these days in Saint-Raphael... but that could change!

Most tourists (locals included) still flock nowadays to the biggest and most famous towns of the Riviera (Nice, Cannes, Antibes, Saint-Tropez...) which makes Saint-Raphael more like a family town which is something which seduced me right from the start. I like its discretion (compared to other towns) and I love the fact that you can go to the beach anytime of the day and you will easily find room to spread your towel on the sand just a few feet away from the sea.

My flat is just behind the big buildings.

In the distance on the left we see the neighboring town of Frejus.

And if you don't like to lie on the sand, you can rent mattresses

(where you can get served drinks!) .

This picture (that I'm kinda proud of) was taken at sunset (around 10 PM) on 14th of July 2015: people were still bathing (the water was at 26°C or 78.8°F for those of you using weird measurement units) while waiting for the fireworks to start!

Now, the good thing about having a flat that we use as a base is that we can do what we want. Suppose you travel with a teenage son and he doesn't like to go sightseeing, well he can stay at the flat, go to the beach and do his thing and we gather together at the end of the day. We can even plan in advance to reserve one day of your stay just for "farniente" where, during the summer, you don't need to pay me for that day because 1) I'm not greedy 2) I can also enjoy a day off!

But, the way I see it, if you join me on the Riviera, it's not to spend your whole day on the beach doing nothing. But what I particularly like is that, early in the morning (if it's your thing) before we go for a trip,

or at the end of the day (more like my thing), when we come back from our sightseeing,

it's so easy to go for a swim for an hour or so...

All we have to do to go to that beach, is to go round the second block from my flat and we arrive here:

Saint-Raphael from the top of Saint-Peter's church tower (I doubt you'll want to climb all the stairs).

Like that you can also spend time on the beach, go golfing, snorkling (great place for that 5 mn from the flat (fabulous for small kids), wind-surfing or deep-sea diving. And the icing on the cake is that YOU can decide when those days happen at the last minute depending on the weather and your mood!

You can see Saint-Peter's church tower at the beginning of this video.