Because My Grandma Doesn't Have Facebook: Cassis :D

I told Carmen I wanted to go to St Tropez, and she had the fabulous idea of visiting the Calanques in Cassis, a beach about 2 hours away on the train. Worked out perfectly for me, because Nimes was on the way so I got to visit Audrey, and her and I went together and met Carmen and the other American girl on the way at the train layover. So our plan was, arrive in Cassis, walk about a mile to calanques, hike up the cliff, nap on calanques and read the rest of the day, get tan/burnt, walk back to the train station, go home.

Hiccup numero uno:

I had my overnight bag with me. Which is like NBD but it’s ROLLY and HEAVY. And I have Nigel. Who is fat. Not only does this make walking the 2 miles up and down curbs and through gravel pathways SUPER annoying and time consuming (and also that’s really bad for my poor wheels!), there is no way I can hike with this thing. So we know hiking is out the window, but we also noticed it would be because this cliff is the HIGHEST IN EUROPE. It’s vertical. Like a million feet. No climbing period.

Hiccup numero dos:

We have to walk two miles to get to the beach. We thought it’d be a simple like 1 mile walk.. nope- up and down, on or off sidewalk, with rolly polly in the back and it took us 30 minutes. At this point we decide a taxi cab back would be the best bet.

Hiccup numero tres: We.cannot.find.the.beach. Or the calanques. We stop somewhere to eat, all starving and ask the server- how do we get to the calanques? She says you can either take a boat tour or WALK TWO AND A HALF HOURS. No.thank.you. So we’re kinda bumming, but ask her about the beach anyway, she says it’s down to the port, take a right, walk 15 minutes.

Fabulous thing numero uno: We get to the port to look for the beach, and decide we really do want to see the calanques and we should figure it out. So we look around and right away, there’s this little red shack that sells tickets for a boat ride to see the calanques. You can’t hop off and chill at the calanques, but you do get a boat ride to go see three of them for 14 euro. Not bad, not bad at all.

Fabulous thing numero dos: The boat left like 10 minutes after we bought our tickets. How perfectly imperfect would that have been if we arrived right after it left.

Fabulous thing numero tres: The boat ride. We got to sit up front in the open air, and Carmen got to experience her first boat ride. The calanques were beautiful, and definitely set deep into the cliffs and we would’ve taken at least two and a half hours to get there. Good thing we didn’t try.

Fabulous thing numero cuatro: We found the beach. RIGHT by the port. Would’ve been hiccup numero cuatro if we had tried to walk all the way to the beach the server mentioned and found out about this beach on the way back. All the women, topless. Young, old, flirting with boys and drinking wine, talking to neighbors, sleeping, eating, playing with children, it doesn’t matter. Women are topless.