The day started off benign enough. We set out to get Cairanne ready for the next renters. Margaret’s cleaning lady had flown the coup and with an uncertain stand-in in the wings, it was the least we could do.
Anyway, we completed our clean-up and were on our way to Marseilles by 11:30.
Now I know there is a school of thought that feels Marseilles is still an unsavory place full of thieves and fraud. Although that element might exist, I certainly don’t feel it is either dominant or even noticeable. In fact, I love this place!
We’re trying a new hotel this year – The Park Suites Confort Inn (spelled correctly, by the way). We found it around 12:30 with help from the GPS and discovered we couldn’t check in until 3:00. C’est la France! We managed to get them to store our luggage in the breakfast room and then headed to the airport.
Because Dawn & I booked flights in a different manner this time – ie Dawn was free – we wanted to see if we could get seats together on the Marseilles to Paris flight tomorrow. It turned out to be no problem and we got our boarding passes for both flights to boot. Then we were off to Marseilles.
The Old Port is the centre of all tourism and since we booked a cruise today into the callanques, which is translated creeks, but is actually more like mini fiords, this was where we started.
We hit a port side café for lunch and Dawn had one more kick at Moules frites while I had the following.
Yes, that’s right. I had sardine doughnuts! They were actually just sardines deep-fried, but heh, if they say doughnut, I’m in.
We figured we were in lots of time before our cruise, but headed to boarding area anyway. Low and behold, the cruise had been bumped up by a half hour and we arrived just in time. They apologized for not knowing how to contact us about the change, but the bottom line was that if we’d arrived at the given hour, we would have missed the boat – literally.
Anyway, we set out on a three-hour cruise up the coast from Marseilles to visit all of the callanques between Marseilles and Cassis. These callanques are not something you can visit on roads. There aren’t any. That doesn’t mean there aren’t settlements in several of the callanques. It just means you’ve got to have a boat and a flashlight, because no hydro services the callanques.
The limestone geology of the coastline is striking, to say the least. Thank God for the digital age because I was snapping pictures for the whole cruise and although I ended up uploading over 200, I’d already gleaned many more.
You wouldn't know this was the 4th of October. There were bikini babes abounding, mostly in private craft.
At one point in the cruise we came upon a cliff diver. I thought initially he was set to jump and thought about the importance of protecting his balls. But he ended up diving and I captured the entire span, but will only bore you with three pics here, entitled Going…going…gone!
By the time we made the return journey to Marseilles, the sun was significantly lower, making for some pretty striking photos.
Although most of the coastline is limestone, when you get past Cassis, you encounter the highest cliffs in Europe – over 400 metres. They have a significant amount of iron and/or ochre in them as you can see. At the beginning of this trip, we drove across the top of these cliffs from La Ciotat to Cassis. Apparently the road we drove on is often closed due to high winds.
Following the cruise, we got back to out hotel and finally got to check in. It did take a while to find the keys to get our luggage out of hock, but finally we had a room.
Following the advice of our hotel staff, we opted for a drive to Martiques for dinner. This place is a good 20 minutes from the airport, but off we went.
Because we were unfamiliar with the area and the sun had already set, we missed finding the really touristy area, but had a nice final meal anyway at this place.
Back at the hotel, it took forever to catalogue pictures and get some of them internet ready.
But sleep can come tomorrow on the plane, right? Maybe!
In any case, this will be my last entry for this trip. See you in 6 months in Rio!
1 comment:
Bon voyage, safe return home! We have loved following your adventures!
Jackie & Chris.
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