La Bastide de Saint Tropez*****, Var, France.

A quiet, lovely small delux five star hotel, filled with charm, great cuisine
and walking distance from the center of St. Tropez.

The adorable "Hotel La Bastide de Saint Tropez" sits back from a peaceful tree-shaded residential street away from the intensity and energy of perhaps our favorite town in France - St. Tropez. A Relais et Châteaux for some time now, La Bastide de St. Tropez deservedly earned its 5th star early in 2011, making it one of the top destinations for pampering in the world. Small and intimate, it thus assures very personal service and a sense of a home away from home on a deluxe but understated level rather the usual hotel complex.

The rooms and suites range around the ground level pool with its exotic waterfall. They are set back far enough for privacy and yet close enough to step out for a splash within just a few paces. Meals are served around the same pool if desired. It is a peaceful oasis just on the edge of town next to vineyards a few meters further down the lane. During the 2010-11 winter, all the rooms and suites were stripped back to the walls and completely refurbished with new, larger bathrooms tiled in earth tone marble.

Admitting to some bias here, this is where, when we have the luxury of a holiday ourselves, you will find us. It is a warm, welcoming, intimate place that respects your privacy without being stuffy. Relaxation begins the moment you enter and collapse under the shade of three hundred year old olive trees where the house "watch" cat is often to be found legs dangling free and tail twitching.

Built in the Provençal style with cut stone floors, warm colored stucco exterior walls partially covered with bougainvillea, exposed beams and rooms each individually styled, it is designed to be exactly what you may have dreamed a Provençal country house should be. The brain child of owners Jeannine and Boris-Serge Sidoroff, it was built within the last couple of decades on the site of a vineyard. There are still vineyards just down the lane.

This is the relaxed, informal, unhurried feeling of a private country house where the charming director of the hotel, M. Fabien Delaffon, plays host and unobtrusively checks on everything and everyone's desires and needs on a regular basis. If privacy is important to you, this is the low key place for you.

The hotel's restaurant, "L'Olivier", serves excellent Mediterranean cuisine, a favorite of ours especially as it is interpreted here. Breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as snacks anytime are served more formally in the Victorian style "conservatory" dining room, outside under the shade of the olive trees, around the pool or in your rooms on your private terrace.

If you can tear yourself away from total relaxation, the hotel limousine drops you anywhere you want in town and picks you up when you are ready to come back, so no fighting for the elusive parking place or enduring the traffic snarl-ups that one double parked driver can create. And if you feel like a cruise, the hotel has a high speed motor yacht at your disposal for special cruises from a Champagne evening in the bay or an extended cruise to Corsica, Italy or a destination of your choice. There is an exercise room with a variety of machines for when total relaxation become too much.

M. Deleffon told us of families who stay for a month or more, bring their dogs and children. But one story that caught our attention was that he has noticed that a number of husbands staying with their families in the summer, loved to rise just before dawn, take the shuttle when the day was just under the horizon, go to the port when no one was around and sit in a quayside café and quietly enjoy a coffee and croissant hot from the boulangere as they watched the sunrise over the bay. Watch the fishermen (yes there are still fishermen in St. Tropez) return with their catch, stall owners set up shop, smell the aromas of bakeries, and draw in the fresh newness of the day tourist free. Then take the shuttle back to the hotel and enjoy another breakfast with their families under the olive trees. Can life be any better?

This is a place to call home for a vacation lolling by the pool or a center for exploration of the region. Many families have been coming here for so long the kids are bringing their own children to spend a holiday with the grand parents! Not to mention the ideal marriage site, honeymoon destination, week-end getaway, or better yet, a week day mini-vacation (with the wifi, the office need never know.)