South of France – Part 2
Sunday
We slept in (again) until 10. We had to rush to catch the breakfast buffet at the hotel. It wasn’t worth the rush. Oh well, at least it was food. Lyon (and many cities around Europe) have bike rental stations around the city. You pop in a credit card, pick a bike and keep it as long as you like. The first 30 minutes are free and after that it was around €1/hour. We used them to cruise around the park/zoo near our hotel. We had a good time just riding around enjoying the weather, looking at some animals and ended the afternoon with an ice cream. We got back in the car and headed for Avignon around 3. The GPS had issues due to erroneous traffic reports and sent us on some weird detours. But since we were in no rush, we didn’t mind and just enjoyed the scenery. Surprisingly, my sinuses were feeling better, but not great.
We eventually made it to Avignon and – with the help of the tourist office – got a hotel on the Place de Paleis. We wandered around a bit and had an OK dinner with some good people watching. In the square underneath our window, a violinist set up to play. The Bee Gees – How Deep Is Your Love was one of the songs. She did a pretty good job with it. After about 20 minutes, an older couple walked past and the woman asked to play the violin. She proceeded to play a Russian sounding song and just kill it. The pace started slow and built into a violently fast pace. Every time the pace quickened, the crowd in the square clapped louder to match her intensity. When she was finished, she received a standing ovation from everyone in the square. The violinist had to pack it up for the night. There was no way she could compete with that.
Monday
Surprise, surprise, we slept in again. Supposedly, there’s a famous song about the Bridge of Avignon, so we grabbed some bread and deli, checked out the bridge and had a picnic on the river. The bridge was just there. Nothing special, but it does have a song about it that you’ve probably never heard.
In the afternoon, we made our way to Marseilles. We didn’t even bother to stop. It may be a lovely city, but from what we saw – it was crowded and dirty – we decided to just keep going.
About 20 minutes outside of Marseilles is Cassis. It seemed like a very nice town but it was very crowded. It took us about an hour to find a place to park. Once we got down to the beach (what little there was of it), there was no place to sit. It was absolutely packed. We decided to people watch for a little bit then slowly make our way back to the car. We got some wine, cheese and bread for later and started driving along the coast where we found ourselves in Bandol. It was overrun with tourists and we didn’t have a hotel booked. We desperately called around looking for lodging and managed to find a place in Toulon. After checking into the hotel, we walked top the marina and had dinner while watching the boats (cheese, meat and Chateaunuef du Papes 2006). We didn’t see much of Toulon but the marina was very nice.
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