As far as backup vacation plans go, one could do worse than settling for a South of France and Sardinia yachting trip. Such was the situation in which Princess Diana found herself in late August 1997, when a planned trip to Italy with a girlfriend fell through and she took up Dodi Al Fayed ’s invitation for a second Mediterranean cruise together that month.
Diana, Princess of Wales, wearing an animal print swimsuit and sunglasses, smiles on a boat on July 17, 1997 in Saint-Tropez, France.
There was a restlessness to Diana’s movements in those summer months. July brought the end of her two-year relationship with Dr.
Hasnat Khan and the beginning of her romance with Dodi, while August would bring the one-year anniversary of her divorce from the then Prince Charles . Perhaps relatedly, she was committed to staying on the move.
Diana traveled constantly, vacationing with the Al Fayed family in St. Tropez, visiting her sister Sarah McCorquodale , and campaigning against landmines in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Diana was in a period of enormous transition,” says Kate Snell, author of Diana: Her Last Love . “She was trying to work out what her life would look like outside the constraints of a royal life. She’d been divorced for a year, was no longer tied by the House of Windsor and could make choices for herself.”