Discovering the calanques

We had no fixed agenda for today and I’d been up past midnight dealing with my home Internet problems, so we slept in until the sun woke us. We had a leisurely breakfast, did more laundry, edited a few photos, and finally left the AirBnB around 11:30am.

The walk into town is about 15-20 minutes; it takes longer if you stop and look at the beautiful scenery, which we did. Plage du Bestoutan is the closest beach to our AirBnB, and it seems to be very popular, even on a normal work day.

We reached town in plenty of time to visit the market and then had a very nice sea bass lunch at Brasserie Le Cendrillon just off the beach, followed by very good gelato from L’Artisan Glacier while we waited for the Tourist Office to reopen.

But on our way to the Tourist Office, we happened to see the ticket booth for boat tours to the calanques; a one-hour tour to the first three calanques was leaving in just a few minutes, so we bought our tickets and hopped aboard.

Le Château
Cap Canaille
Lighthouse in the harbor
Sea view of Plage du Bestotan

After we passed Plage du Bestotan, we were in uncharted territory; the Captain narrated the trip, but in French, so we didn’t really know where we were much of the time.

What’s mostly missing in this photo?

We reached Calanque de Port-Miou about 15 minutes into the trip.

Harbor at Calanque de Port-Miou
Leaving Port Miou

We sailed around Pointe de la Cacau on the way to the second calanque, Calanque de Port Pin.

Pointe de la Cacau
A lovely day for a sail
Calanque de Port Pin
Port Pin selfie

Calanque d’en Vau was our final calanque for the trip; it had a big crowd on the beach, rocks, and in the water. It even had cliff divers!

The beach at Calanque d’en Vau
Rock Climber at Calanque d’en Vau
Contemplation
In the water
In medias res
And he’s in!
Leaving Calanque d’en Vau

We returned to the harbor and wandered around for a few minutes, then we went back to our AirBnB to rest and cool off.

Returning to the harbor

We didn’t stay long, though; we wanted to see Port-Miou again, and its entrance is only a 15 minute walk from the AirBnb. We could see the harbor from the road into the park.

We were among the very few people going into the park at 6pm – there was a big crowd leaving. We walked around for a few minutes and decided to come back when we’d have more time (and energy) to explore.

Last bit of bright sun at Port Miou

We were ready for dinner and had leftover pizza from yesterday and an oven. But the manual for the oven was only in French and Italian, the display on the oven was in French, and there wasn’t anything obvious like a “heat” button. It took a couple of tries, but I found the manual for the UK version of the oven, which let me navigate the oven’s menu system and reheat the pizza…which was much better yesterday. Just as we were closing the oven door after taking out the last of the pizza, the power went out in the kitchen! I called our host who told me that they were having problems with the breaker for the oven and couldn’t figure out what was doing it; he told me where the breaker was and I reset it. Then I tried opening and closing the oven door again…and the lights went out again. I reset the breaker again so we could have lights in the kitchen; I don’t plan to do any more oven debugging here.

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