Surf's Up!

Once again the “unusual weather” forced a change of plans and our normal docking in Sanary sur-mer was diverted to Toulon, France. Toulon is the site of the largest French naval base, and where the French fleet was scuttled intentionally in 1942 rather than fall into German hands. Between the bombardment of the city by, first, the Germans and, later, the Americans, not much of the old city remains. The result is a hodge podge of architectural styles and a lot of quasi-East German-looking buildings thrown up post-war and in the 60’s. In other words, Toulon isn’t much to look at . . . . . I’m sure the people are lovely.

We boarded another bus that took us to nearby Cassis, France, and it is a lovely little town on the Mediterranean. On the way there, we stopped at the tallest maritime peak (i.e., overlooking the sea) in all of Europe – about 1,300 feet or so – and nicknamed “Mountain of the Bad Men” because of rumored Mafia dealings held there.

The views were stunningly spectacular, but I rediscovered my hesitancy with tremendous heights and could only get within about 10 feet of the edge. Cheryl was quick, of course, to take advantage of me and kept purposely edging closer to the sheer cliff walls, and making lunging movements which scared the bejeesus out of me. I told her I could see the headline in the Columbus Dispatch . . . . “Pickerington Woman Dies in Cliff Fall in France”!

The topography in the area was really stunning, and there were tons of vineyards, often on terraced fields to maximize the space for hillside growing.

We eventually made our way into Cassis where we wandered around for about 90 minutes and perused the local shops and had our obligatory cup of cappuccino for the day. We saw lots of rich folks with dogs who spoke French (or at least we imagined they did), including a snappy little French bulldog named Pedro who reminded us greatly of our late and much loved Boston terriers, Maugwai and Paco T. Taco.

Back on the bus toward Toulon, we took a detour through Sanary sur-mer where we supposed to dock, and could clearly see the reason we didn’t. People wearing wet suits were surfing LARGE waves into the very upscale beach area (not too unlike Cannes). I can see why the cruise ship wanted to dock there as it was significantly more beautiful than Toulon, but certainly would’ve been a lot more dangerous from the nautical perspective.

Tomorrow is our first day in Barcelona, Spain, and I heard it is going to be significantly warmer than it has been these last few days (which have been in the 50’s and 60’s). We’re keeping our fingers crossed!