I've heard it through the Grapevine

I still had this promise of posting something, so there you go. This blog is for expressing my travel-lust so I think it's a part of liking to share as well.

And for the other small-town girls around, it is sometimes lonely when nobody recognizes your wonderful clothes. Mayby you guys will :). In my case I wore this Equipment dress, My Chloe mini Marcie, Greek-Sandals gladiators and my Dolce & Gabanna sunglasses.

I went to the South of France after two years and I stuck to the coast this time. This whimsical little grapevine vineyard has been the producer of a more elite wine being served at haute classe L'Orangerie at the St. Tropez coast: Chateau de Pamplonne.

Ramatuelle, the St. Tropez beach, was more casual than I expected. I'm slightly spoiled, though. I went to a couple of beach-etablissements, like the infamous Club 55: can you believe they charge you similar price on a seat at the front of the beach than Holland??? But Holland is weirdly expensive on it's space: try parking in Amsterdam under €5 for under an hour.  I'll write more on that soon enough :)

Sormiou

Summer 2012

Sormiou has been one of the Calangues around Marseille I visited this summer: gorgeous, reminding me of the French Caribbean with the kaleidoscope of turquoise hues of the sea.

It was quite difficult to get access to this little bay. French people will say "Pfff, it'zz not difficulte" when they know some English, or a stream of words I haven't gotten in my highschool French classes. But when they say that you bet it's going to be impossibly difficult!

My first time I blagged myself in: you have to reserve for the restaurant in Haute French to be let in by a sternlooking, goateed monsieur standing like a Royal Army defender by the gate. Somehow I managed to get accross that I would go to the restaurant and they let me in...

And then....BLISS by ocean water surrounded beautiful Elite French people

(yeh, I kinda miss this part of summer, so what do you miss?)

4 Standouts of 2012

I'm gonna be entirely unoriginal on this front and sum up some favourite moments of 2012:

1. Blogger Community

I sort of grew as a blogger: Quite unexpectedly. I gotten feed and comments on my blog and my outfit posts. My way of approaching fashionblogging in an original (read: weirder) way actually struck better than if I would have gone standard. And why would I go standard? After all: It's my Art.

Anyway, I'm among other (blogger)women these days and even though commenting on the really succesful bloggers who get more than a 100 comments per post, I still like to see their lives are going well, and how they dress accordingly to it! And the ones that are just as talented and have fewer comments are a brilliant read/outfit-check as well.

2. TRAVEL

My name is still MlleWanderlust, although I wanna change it into MsWanderlust, less French and more age-including than mademoiselle (they basically hesitate between calling me Mademoiselle (miss) or Madame (misses) so I might leave that one out). But still Wanderlust because I love to travel...

My greatest travel discovery has been France (read/see pictures here). I'm not talking about Paris. Paris isn't France and I wanted to explore the real France a bit better: and I did. So cute knowing that whole Holland goes to France for years and I have skipped it for so long. It has been quite fun to visit some parts of it, but I consider it a difficult country too with habits that sometimes gotten lost in translation.

3. Company: Freja

I had been looking for an adoption cat since summer '12 and found him this autumn: LOVE at first sight! He grew from a docile cat into a really active, jumpy, affective and sometimes teasing fuzzball, and I love him the more of it.

4. Somewhat excessive Consumerism:

GOSH, I remember last year's post saying I'd discovered all designers and intended to spend less? NO WAY...too much cash flew out to Givenchy, Chloe, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and Hermes.

I am not going to promise to spend less, because I might do the opposite again when I make such a promise. Just going to try to tone down and get lovingly with Topshop and the likes again. After all, I like the brands but I found out they are not the best thing ever. E.g. I sold my Givenchy Antigona after not loving it enough, which was the best anti-consumerist thing I did in 2012!

 Ps: What were your 4 highlights of 2012?

Biarritz

Expectations can be both fun and limited. I decided I would not have too many going to Biarritz, as I often been to places hyped as 'surfers' paradise' or 'hippy heaven', only to find a whole bunch of wannabe's hanging out without having real surf or hippy connectation. Somewhat Baudrillard's idea of the simulacrum has gone massively large these days, and I see it both in tourism and, ofcourse, the way people profile themselves on the internet.

Shortly, there was little surf to be found in Biarritz but I enjoyed the haute and not-too-haute public and beach a lot. The cemetry you've already seen here, and the beachbums being haute in the air, but not so haute (or hot?) property to portray over here.

Don't be grave...

I got this weird fascination with graveyards in warmer climates: the use of happy colours and opulent religious symbolism on the graves are more frequent over there than at our protestant graveyards.

As with the celebration of the dead in Mexico, I believe in a ceremonial form of beauty, art and sometimes kitch to remember...

These were made in Biarritz during my roadtrip this year...

Wild Horses of the Camargue

I think about 99% of young girls love ponies and horses: hence seeing the wild horses of the Camargue brought out the little girl in me.

The real little girl on the photo is more occupied with her toy Flamingo, also an animal roaming freely in this part of France

"Saut" II

I add my contribution to my fellow sisterhood (and some brothers) by sharing these images:

 

This guy, he said his name was Chesme, made some crazy jumps.

Here's he is estimating his jump:

There he goes, jumping over 8 meters of stone before reaching watered areas:

Reached the water...
 
Some video footage with a kind of English that has me mixing up all kind of dialects at the same time.I've lived at too many places in my life so my English has no real national identity anymore.

The Future will bring...Polkadots!

My French roadtrip included a visit to gypsy town Saintes-Marie-de-la-Mer . 

This tarot reader was the only gypsy-looking person so I gladly made a picture of her.

"Saut!": Cliffjumpers in Cassis (Fr) I

 

Disclaimer: The jumpers were fully aware being photographed and perhaps even showing off more for this reason. You know, male vanity ;) 

After a couple of days on the French Countrysite I was ready to go to the coast again. I went to a couple of places, seen some Calangues, and ended up diving from high cliffs and making pictures of other divers too.