The Small Town of Grimaud France

On our way to Saint Tropez... okay I didn't mean to rhyme there but it happened and I'm going to leave it. Okay let me start again.

On our way to Saint Tropez...in the morning we drove through the small town of Grimaud. We just caught a glimpse of it while passing through but it looked like a really charming little village from the car so we kept it in mind as a potential spot to stop on our way back to Aix-en-Provence.

Grimaud was located only 20 minutes from Saint-Tropez so it didn't reduce our drive time back by very much, but it also wasn't a detour at all so I'm glad that we stopped just to check it out.

The village was quaint and charming with clean little streets and tons of colorful flowers and plants.

These pink flowers (geraniums maybe?) and pink floral vines were everywhere in town.

Literally everywhere.

This home almost looked like it was being consumed by them.

Anyway, we got there in the mid afternoon when everyone was in the restaurants finishing up with lunch so there werent many people on the streets that day.

This gave it that sleepy little village feel. Maybe it was the heat. I remember it being quite hot that day.

There were some artisinal shops in town and none of them were at all touristy. That was a bit surprising, but then, the town didn't seem all that touristy really.

We didn't see any shops that we wanted to go into though. We were pretty content to just walk around and look at the pretty flowers.

In the Southern part of France you sometimes see more tropical or even desert like vegetation. I liked this large bushel of tall cacti next to some houses.

You might remember this photo of the blue door from my last post on doors. It was taken in this town.

The town has a somewhat interesting history related to the road that runs through it. I read it off of one of those city plaque that you see in some locations. I took a photo of it but I'll just paraphrase it for you here and now instead of posting it in the article.

In 1866 a county road was built through the center of Grimaud which created a whole new quarter of town that linked the old village center to the newly constructed roadway. The new quarter was built to be more open and more grandiose than any part of the older village so it quickly became the new gathering center for residents in the city. It became known as La Place Neuve, or "the New Place" in English.

20 years later, in 1886, a large fountain was installed in the main square that brought water to the village for the first time in its history. The people were so greatful for the water source that together they engraved the back of the fountain thanking the municipality for the much needed resource.

• Credit to the city of Grimaud for the above information.

Moving on with our journey we found this old clock and bell tower that I thought was pretty neat.

The wire cage design feature at the top must be more of a southern thing because I never saw anything like that up in the Northern part of the country.

We only spent maybe 30 minutes in the town itself but then we found a hike in the area with some old ruins that were pretty cool. I'll talk more about that a later time though.

Well thats it for now. If you are interested in seeing more of my trip to the Provence region of France than stay tuned, theres more to come. Until next time, thanks for stopping by.