Cassis

I thought that since we were spending the weekend in Marseille we should go to Cassis and see the Calanques. The town of Cassis is only about 30 minutes from Marseille. The jury is still out on whether or not you pronounce the final S of Cassis (kah-SEE or kah-SEES). I have always heard CassiS and prefer that pronunciation, but we heard the lady at the tourist office say "CassI" on the phone. I looked it up as well as I could online afterwards and found partisans of both pronunciations. This aside is probably only interesting to me, so I'll just move right along now to our visit.

This is the scenic route:

We figured since we were going up, and the Calanques were down, we were probably going the wrong way. So we turned around and headed back to the city, and the aforementioned tourist office. This was on the way back down. Still scenic.

At the tourist office, Frederic looked at a map and discovered that the one Calanque that is accessible on foot is a 30 minute walk. That must have slipped my mind; but then, I think the last time I went there was about 13 years ago, give or take. We figured the 30 minute estimate was counted without a 3-year-old and an 11-month-old tagging along, and we wanted to be home by lunchtime so the boys could nap. So we nixed the Calanque and just visited the port instead.

There was a very strong, very cold wind blowing on the beach!

The beach! Ahhh! What more could a land-locked northerner ask for in the winter? Well, maybe the beach without the bone-piercingly cold wind. But I'll take what I can get.

Benjamin liked looking at the boats. We were able to walk out onto the piers here, they weren't closed off like they are in Marseille.


Fishing nets. We saw a fisherman on the port selling sea urchins! I didn't get a picture of that, though.


Noah stayed nice & warm in his little eskimo suit. We never used anything like that for Benjamin, so I guess that means we go out & about a lot more with Noah.