Cassis is a town east of Marseille and about an hour away by train and bus. It’s in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region (the French Riviera).
People go to Cassis for one reason: the calanques. These are limestone steep-sided inlets and valleys etched out by rivers or collapsing caves.
My initial plan was to hike the classic three-calanque route. But it was 30°C. So when I got off the train, I got on a bus with everyone else to “Centre-ville”.
I stayed on the bus, not quite sure when to get off. I hesitated so long that the bus terminated after about 20 minutes! It was near the harbour.
At the harbour, I saw a queue. I wondered what it was for. People were queueing to go on a boat trip to the calanques. You could go to three, five, seven or nine calanques, each taking longer (and costing more).
I joined the queue and bought a ticket for the five-calanque trip. Since my boat was due in an hour, I walked around the harbour.
The boat ride, my first on this European trip, was about two hours. It was good to see France from a different angle. The calanques were spectacular. The water was clean and its colour produced many sharp intakes of breath from the boat-trippers. This was only topped by seeing fish swimming next to the boat when we stopped to admire a particularly striking calanque with a beach.
When we returned, I found a place to sit and had my packed lunch.
There wasn’t much else to do. So I walked around the narrow backstreets. Then I saw two beaches on a map and went to those.
On my way back from the second beach, I saw a harbour-side restaurant. It wasn’t too busy. I ordered a house lemon drink and sat outside. I tried to read but it was a good spot for people watching! The lemon drink was deliciously tangy and refreshing.
