Facing St-Tropez across its gulf, STE-MAXIME is the perfect Côte stereotype: palmed corniche and enormous pleasure-boat harbour, beaches crowded with confident bronzed windsurfers and waterskiers, and an outnumbering of estate agents to any other businesses by something like ten to one. It sprawls a little too much – like many of its neighbours – but the magnetic appeal of the water's edge is hard to deny.To enjoy the resort, however, requires money. If your budget denies you the pleasures of promenade cocktail sipping and seafood-platter picking (not to mention waterskiing, wet-biking and windsurfing), you might as well choose somewhere rather prettier to swim, lie on the beach and walk along the shore. For the spenders, Cherry Beach (or its five neighbours on the east-facing plage de la Nartelle, 2km west from the centre towards Les Issambres), is the strip of sand to head for. As well as paying for shaded cushioned comfort, you can enter the water on a variety of different vehicles, eat grilled fish, have drinks brought to your mattress and listen to a piano player as dusk falls. A further 4km on, plage des Eléphants has much the same facilities but is slightly cheaper. Ste-Maxime's vieille ville has several good markets: a covered flower and food market on rue Fernand-Bessy (winter Tues–Sun 6am–1pm & 4–8pm); a fish market every morning on quai des Plaisanciers; a Thursday morning food market on and around place du Marché; bric-a-brac every second and third Saturday of the month on place Jean-Mermoz; and arts and crafts in the pedestrian streets (summer daily 10am–11pm). High up in the Massif des Maures on the road to Le Muy, some 10km north of Ste-Maxime, the marvellous Musée du Phonographe et de la Musique Mécanique, in the parc St-Donat (Easter to mid-Oct Wed–Sun 10am–noon & 3–6pm; €3), is the result of one amazing woman's forty-year obsession with collecting audio equipment. She has amassed a wide selection of automata, musical boxes and pianolas, as well as various outstanding pieces: one of Thomas Edison's "talking machines" of 1878, the first recording machines of the 1890s and an amplified lyre (1903). Almost half the exhibits still work. If you get a tour from Madame herself, you'll find it hard to resist her enthusiasm for the history of this branch of technology. You can get the Le Muy bus to here from Ste-Maxime's place J.-Mermoz.
Pages in section ‘Ste-Maxime’: Practicalities.
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