After spending about a week in Spain, we headed for the French Riviera and Monaco!

Our first stop was to Cassis, a small seaside village outside of Marseille, France. The area is know for Les Calanques which are deep rocky inlets of white stone that create coves and ocean cliffs. The water here is very blue as this region is around what is know as the Cote de Azul (translates as blue waters).

The combination of white rock, ocean, and beaches was incredibly beautiful! We took a boat from Cassis to see the first 8 of a chain of calanques and had a wonderful afternoon.

The locals seemed to enjoy the beaches and finding their own outcroppings of rock for enjoying the sun. We also saw lots of people cliff jumping into the water – neat!

We grabbed some delicious sorbet and then headed off for a scenic overlook drive above Cassis. The views from this drive were incredible! Here are just a few of the views we saw:

Several people have asked what type of car we have so here’s a shot of it – it’s a Citroen C4. It’s working out very well!

We did have some excitement before dinner in Marseille! We always check maps/GPS to ensure that the local roads allow traffic, are two-way, etc. The road for the restaurant passed all of our tests. Well, when we drove to the restaurant we got in some trouble… The road was two way, but it was only as wide as one car!!! So, once we got to the restaurant and found no spots we had to do a six-point turn (Emily took the honors) while against a 15 foot drop off into the bay. After we made it out of that jam we went to a bigger street with parking. We found a spot, but the spot was actually painted on the sidewalk – yes, you have to ram your car up over the curb and park 1/2 on the sidewalk and 1/2 on the road. By the time we got to dinner we were about done for the day!

Here is a picture of our “two-way” road! Emily got to turn the car around in the narrow bend without going into the water. 🙂

Once the car was parked it was time to have the world renown Bouillabaisse. Bouillabaisse is a soup made of tomato broth with multiple types of fish in it. Marseille has an active port so the Bouillabaisse here is made up of fish literally caught that morning so it’s absolutely fresh. In fact, the specific fish included in soup varies each day based on what was caught that morning. When we ordered, the staff brought out the fish that would be used to make our exact soup (Emily always loves seeing the full raw fish before cooking ;))! It was delicious!

Next up is Nice and Monaco! Au revoir!