Another great weekend!

Another great weekend in the south of France!

On Saturday some friends and I traveled to Cassis, a town south of Aix right on the coast. The port was LOVELY; the colors of the buildings were so vibrant. It was what I had been expecting of St. Tropez (at home I'd always heard so much about St. Tropez but never anything Cassis) but the town of Cassis turned out to be much nicer, in my opinion anyway! Although there was a beach right by the port, we decided to do a bit of a hike to reach the Calanques ('Lagoons') which we had heard were gorgeous.

There are 4 lagoons located at different stages of the hike. The 'nicest' one is, of course, the furthest and hardest to reach. We hadn't been expecting a very difficult hike but the rocks proved very slippery and since not all of us were wearing the right shoes or clothes, we decided not to venture down to the furthest lagoon. We did do a good deal of hiking though, and saw some AMAZING views which we thought resembled the scenery of 'Never Never Land', from Peter Pan. It was THAT gorgeous! We then made our way back another one of the lagoons we saw on the hike (not as hard to reach) which, although it wasn't the 'nicest' one, was still so pretty! The water was so clear and definitely warm enough to swim. I felt so lucky I was swimming in the ocean in the beginning of October! Definitely wouldn't be doing that in BC. We are hoping to make a trip back in the spring so we can try out the farthest lagoon that we didn't make it to that day.

We experienced a little bit of trouble getting home. Upon our arrival in Cassis we checked the bus times for returning home, and (after making sure it didn't just come on every third Tuesday of the month or during Christmas holidays... the buses in France are very finicky!) we saw that the last bus to Aix was at 5:05. We were at the bus stop in plenty of time to see a bus going to Aix pull away from around the corner. Turns out there was another bus stop around just around the corner, and THAT was where we were supposed to have caught the bus going to Aix (which apparently left at 4:55... we still don't know why there was a sign that said a bus going to Aix at 5:05). So we had to go to Marseille and switch to Aix from there. Kind of a pain but at least we made it back!

Today (Sunday) we traveled south-west Martigues, also known as the Venice of Provence. Although there wasn't a ton to do in the town (the bus that went to the beach didn't run on Sundays) we did enjoy walking around. From what I've seen/heard about Venice, it sure did look a lot like it! It was very pretty. We were all very tired from the long day we had on Saturday so we headed back pretty early. Tonight's agenda is homework!

As great as my weekend was I wish I could have seen Olivia for her sweet 16 and be visiting my dad at the hospital. Miss you both & thinking of you.