Sep 4th: Morning flight from London to Marseille. We picked up our rental car at Hertz and learned that they they didn't have GPS systems or maps to offer. They pointed us towards Marseille and told us it was about a 30 minute drive. Luckily the road signs were really good and we found our way really easily. We checked into our hotel, which was cute but the rooms were tiny.
Here's the view from our window
We set out exploring and ended up walking up to the Palais du Pharo. From there you can see out over the entire harbor.
We spent the rest of the day walking around Marseille. We saw this maniac on a motorcycle do a wheelie down the street below. People were jumping out of his way. It was insane.
I found a macaron shop right next to our hotel. We tried a few different flavors and they were awesome.
After relaxing in the hotel we decided to head out that night and find a nice place for dinner.
We ended up finding a really cute place called Le Ruban Bleu. We sat outside and had our first taste of the Rose (I can't figure out how to add the mark over the e) that the region is so famous for. It was deelish!
Jed also tried the Bouillabaisse (yes, I had to Google that spelling). I don't want to say it was gross, but.....
The next morning we got out pretty early and grabbed the breakfast of champions (McDonalds) before hitting the road. We were headed about two hours north of Marseille, into the Var Region, to the Lac de Sainte Croix. I had seen this in a travel book and really wanted to check it out. It definitely did not disappoint! The drive alone was worth the trip. We passed through so many cute towns along the way. We also saw a lot of countryside. Here is our first view of the lake from the highway:
The water comes from the Verdon River, through the Verdon Gorge. It is bright turquoise and definitely one of the prettiest places we've ever seen. We parked down by one of the beaches and rented a double kayak. We paddled past the bridge and into the canyon.
We found a waterfall and paddled through it. That was my only contact with the water. It was ice cold.
This really nice French couple saw that we were trying to take our own picture and offered to take it for us. The husband took the camera and said "my wife has this same camera". He gave it to her and she proceeded to turn the camera off and on 5 times before realizing that was not the shutter button. Maybe that wasn't his wife.
There were tons of people climbing the rock walls of the canyon and jumping into the water. Jed decided to join them for a few jumps....
We had been on the river for a couple of hours and it was getting really crowded and we were starving. We decided to stop in one of the cute towns we passed on our way to the lake. We ended up stopping in a town called Riez and ate at a restaurant called Le Purple. They had the most delicious double cheeseburgers!
We headed back to Marseille and crashed in our hotel for a couple of hours before heading out in search of dinner. (As this blog continues, you'll definitely notice a re-occurring trend of eat, sleep, eat, sleep.) We found a cute italian place on the harbor, had some pizza, then went to check out the local Irish pub. We watched a little "football" and listened to some good music before calling it a night.
The next morning we packed up our stuff, checked out of our hotel, and headed towards St. Tropez. Our next hotel was in Cannes and St. Tropez was (sort of) on the way, so we decided to spend the day there on the beach. The drive was insane. The roads were really mountainous and I had to drive so slowly because it was one switch-back after another. After almost 2 1/2 hours, we arrived in St. Tropez. We were about 5 minutes away from the beach and I started getting a really bad migraine. My vision was so impaired but Jed can't drive a manual car, so I had to keep driving (I know - embarrassing, right? ;) ) It was only a few minutes before we parked in a lot but I was probably driving 5 miles per hour and making Jed lookout for any stop signs I might not see. I took some meds and we headed out to the beach. Lucky for us, we had parked right next to the geriatric nudist colony beach: Neptune Beach. We walked out onto the beach and immediately realized we had made a mistake. There were old naked people EVERYWHERE!!!! We were trying to be tactful and not just sprint away, so we walked along the water, hoping that the next beach would be different. There was an old man walking right in front of us, at a pretty good pace. We would have had to jog to pass him. I think the the image of his butt is forever seared in our brains. Lucklily he turned off into the water after a couple of minutes and we made it to the next beach. The age demographic dropped dramatically and there was no full nudity. We ended up spending the day on this beach. St. Tropez is beautiful! The water is amazing! We didn't take many pics because I think the topless people might not have appreciated it!
We had lunch at a cute beach bar before heading in to check out the town.
The town of St. Tropez is really cute and tons of local artists sell their work along the port. We also saw the most amazing super yachts we've ever seen.
(I made Jed pose for this one.)
When we left St. Tropez, everyone else was leaving St. Tropez and there is only one road out. We ended up sitting in terrible traffic. It took an hour just to go one mile. It ended up taking us 3 hours to get to Cannes instad of an hour and a half but the drive was mostly along the coast and was really beautiful.
I'll start my next post in Cannes! Hopefully I can finish the whole trip this week!
Jill
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