Day 3 Sunday 24 June (Toulon)

I set my alarm for 6:15 so that I could hit the shower first.  Our morning went quite smoothly and we made it up to breakfast by about 7am.  We had a good breakfast, there was plenty on offer – fruits, yoghurt, meats, cheeses, breads and rolls, porridges and cereals, the whole range of eggs, bacon, sausages etc as well as pancakes and waffles.

We met at the designated spot for our tour to Cassis and we were soon on our way.  We disembarked in the Port of Toulon

and boarded a bus for our trip to Cassis.  We had a sweet French tour guide who accompanied us on our tour.   We drove to Cassis on an amazing road called the Route des Cretes, up Cap Canaille, a spectacular cliff. 

The road wound around some scary hair-pin bends, but boy was it worth it! 

The view from the top was breath-taking! 

We stopped for photos at the top and then made our way down to the charming town of Cassis.  The town is pedestrian-only, so the bus was parked at the very edge of town and we were then transported down into town by a little motorised train.

Once in town we immediately took the advice of the tour-guide and bought tickets for a boat trip to 3 of the calanques.  

The calanques are basically coves, each one quite unique.    The boat trip was out-of-this-world.  A highlight of our holiday!

The huge, rugged, white cliff faces and the blue, blue, blue of the sea.  I have never seen such spectacular blue!  Wow!   We visited Port-Miou, Port-Pin and En Vau.  We also saw some nudists, seems this area is quite popular with the skinny dippers!  Shew, our conservative South African sensibilities were quite shocked J  I am SO glad we did the boat trip, it was absolutely incredible.

The town of Cassis (pronounced Cas-sea) is really pretty.  I just love the shuttered buildings of Provence, the lavender and the oleander bushes, but mix those with the blue of the Mediterranean Sea and it’s just magic.

After the boat ride we took a wander around Cassis, sampled some lavender ice-cream (surprisingly tasty!) bought a couple of momentoes and then it was time to head back to the bus.  But first….just when you thought I might make it through a blog without a toilet story…..Lisa and I took a trip to the loo.  Eish!  It was a strange place indeed.  A big scary-looking metal door with 3 large lights – yellow, red and green and a notice informing us that we had only 15 minutes to do the job!  

Once you exited (in the required 15 minutes, no more!) the entire room was automatically sprayed with water and disinfectant – leaving about an inch of water on the floor to greet the next visitor!  As you can imagine, it was not an easy job, hovering over the loo, clutching your handbag and trying to keep your pants out of the water…. Fun times!

There was a tiny little market right next to the ship where we bought a couple of gifts before boarding.  It was much cheaper than the shops in Cassis.

We had lunch together at the Windjammer.  Lots to choose from – salads, wraps, create-your-own burgers, sandwiches, a carvery, fish dishes, pasta and some yummy desserts and cookies.

We spent the afternoon relaxing and doing bits and pieces on the boat.  We decided to take a walk up to the pool deck to watch the sail-away party.  We missed the sail-away party in Barcelona as the ship was delayed for a while and we were having supper at sail-away time.  The reason there is a sail-away party in Toulon is because some people join the cruise in Toulon instead of Barcelona.

We had supper in the Windjammer as it was Formal Night and we had decided not to dress up.  It was lovely to see how some people really got into formal night, they looked so nice.  After supper we made our way to the theatre to watch Up in the Air, an acrobatic show.   I thought that parts of the show were really good and other parts quite weak, but overall I was glad we went to see it.

After the show we stopped for a quick cup of tea and then headed off to bed.