Provence in Winter: Hyères, Porquerolles, St-Tropez, Marseille

Car trip from Milan, with my wife and Emma (our 2-year-old dog), lasting 7 days (6 nights), period: from 29-12-09 to 04-01-10 Hotel: IBIS CENTRE - Av. J. Moulin ang Voie Olbia, N98 HYERES (Var) France, Provence - Cost: about euro 1000.00 all inclusive.

This year I wanted to experience Provence in winter. After having been there several times in all the other seasons with complete and satisfying impressions, I really wanted to put this splendid area of France under the magnifying glass, accompanied also by my inseparable Emma, above all to check the attitude of the French (hoteliers and restaurateurs) towards travellers with a pet in tow. I therefore refer you to all the other reports for the usual and classic tourist information (places to visit, transport, costs, motorways, etc. etc.), dwelling only on a few key points.

First of all, the hotel: I chose as a fixed base the lush and very pretty Provençal town of Hyères Les Palmiers, where the name itself makes clear it's the Mediterranean capital of palm groves, with a mild temperature even in winter (or was I just really lucky, with an average of 12-15°C!) and a very central location for visiting, within a radius of 50-80 km (so a very short drive), such famous places as TOULON, MARSEILLE, ST TROPEZ, CASSIS AND THE CALANQUES, THORONET. Usually in France (but also in Europe) I play it safe by choosing hotels from the French multinational group Accor (Sofitel-Mercure-Ibis-Novotel etc.), which offer accommodation for every taste and every budget in an optimal quality-location-price ratio.

In Hyères we "checked in" at the IBIS Centre (in fact there are two Ibis in Hyères; the other is on the road — area La Capte, after Toulon-Hyères international airport — towards the little harbour of La Tour Fondue (Giens peninsula), the embarkation point for Porquerolles, and is regarded as a Thalassotherapy Hotel with pool and spa, perhaps better suited to a summer stay, a bit more expensive and above all not so well located logistically for getting around as the one we chose, which has one big plus: it is indeed in the centre (almost on the corner with the lovely palm-lined Avenue Gambetta that leads to the medieval citadel), but at the same time it sits on the "Voie Olbia" axis (the N98 national road) which leads very conveniently and quickly on one side to Toulon, Cassis and Marseille and on the other (to the east) towards Le Lavandou, St Tropez, St Maxime and the Abbey of Thoronet,

with convenient dual carriageways and motorways, some tolled, some not. Road note: excellent roads and motorways and the tolls aren't all that exorbitant (as some tourist-travellers claim, shooting down the cost of French motorways), no more and no less than our "péage" (just think that a stretch of barely 30 km on the Milan-Como motorway costs a good 3.80 euro!) and the payment systems aren't all that hard to understand (coin "on the fly" into the basket — with the cost of the stretch well advertised in the kilometres before the toll booth, and you certainly don't need to be clumsy at throwing… — European telepass, or a perfectly ordinary credit or debit card). Back to the Ibis hotel.

Excellent welcome, impeccable cleanliness and a spacious room with American-style beds (that is, two doubles), balcony, satellite TV (of the Italian channels you can only get Rai1, though), but without a safe or minibar, and above all (a big plus in the world picture) free wi-fi internet in the room and the lobby! Small dogs like our Emma (but also bigger ones, and other animals) are well accepted and can go anywhere (strange!) including the restaurant and the breakfast room, obviously as long as their owners are well behaved — because that's where the problem and the crux of the matter lies! Cost: 59 euro a night for a room with 2 people + 5 euro a night for the little animal. Breakfast at your discretion and extra at 8 euro, but excellent and plentiful, with no limits: so it suits "grab-everything" Italians, but you can also just have a coffee for 1.8 euro.

In the hotel there's a nice restaurant with prices for every pocket. Moreover, outside restaurant hours there's always the possibility, 24 hours a day, of getting something hot to eat (obviously of the "Findus four-minute pan meal" kind, nothing pretentious) at modest prices. The manager seemed to be of Italian origin — and in fact she was the only one who could move easily around our language — while the other concierge staff (standing out for kindness is a young lady expecting a baby, named Emmanuelle) spoke English quite fluently and always with a Frenchified accent! Free car parking in a covered garage, which isn't bad! But I always left my car outside in the outdoor car park.

From the hotel, 5 minutes on foot along the palm-lined Avenue Gambetta (with music playing among the fronds and Christmas lights with great effect) you're in the old town of Hyères, to wander through its "carrugi" and alleyways packed with shops and life (always bearing in mind that the high season is summer). Worth visiting are the Romanesque churches of St Paul and St Louis, the Casino, the Castle, Place de La République, rue Massillon and many other little things. You eat well in Hyères, undoubtedly (as all over France), and at prices that are, all things considered, more than fair, certainly lower than in Milan (the most expensive city in Italy) where I live. Also because there's always the typically French trick of various fixed-price menus for every taste, as well as "à la carte".

Of course wine, in one of the two world wine homelands, ought to cost much less, unless you make do with the usual pichet of local wine (from a carton or a big bottle: it's the same the world over!). Of course in every establishment animals are allowed, restaurant rooms included: a big plus, unlike Italy, where many managers invent fantastical ASL decrees to ban our little furry friends, when the law leaves it purely to the discretion of the owner whether to accept the animal or not! Indeed, the French patron usually takes care to bring the animal water in a special bowl and (as happened to us) even asks about its food, provided the diet doesn't impose certain obligations for the little dog. We had a really good time, and from Hyères we managed to reach our planned destinations (see above) in at most an hour's drive.

I'd mention a splendid St Tropez in winter time, beautifully lit with pastel effects on the famous "Quai du port", a fairy-tale Place de Lices (complete with an ice-skating rink well integrated architecturally with the square) and Provençal pétanque players (like our own bocce) under the streetlamps, by night, on the packed earth (typical Provençal square). Well, don't miss at least a coffee with cream (expensive though, like everything in St Tropez, 2 x 7 euro) at "Senecqueir" on the port, comfortably seated in the red armchairs — outdoors, I stress, at 15°C and without horrid gas patio heaters — in front of mega yachts (half of them Italian, would you believe!... if our Guardia di Finanza could come here it would be a clean sweep). Toulon and Marseille need no introduction, especially Marseille! So I'll skip them.

Cassis is a Provençal-seaside pearl like St Tropez, indeed more so! With its Calanques (visitable even in winter on boat trips, braving a stubborn little breeze and a slightly rough