We had just enough time to take a short walk on our street before leaving Cassis this morning; it was, as always, beautiful.

Our host Denise gave us a ride to the Cassis train station (it’s about two miles out of town). If you’re looking for a place to stay in Cassis, I cannot imagine a place better than her AirBnb!

Our trip from Cassis to Toulon was fine, but soon after we got to Toulon, the whole station was evacuated to make sure that there were no bombs after they found some abandoned luggage. It was a nice day, so waiting outside wasn’t too painful, but the lack of information (especially in English) was annoying.

They let us back into the station about 45 minutes after closing it; the message boards slowly flickered back to life.

But they lied – our train arrived well before 2, and we had to scramble. We couldn’t find the car with our reserved seats, but the conductor said “just take any seat”, and we did. No one ever checked our tickets, either.

We reached Cannes 50 minutes late and walked to our modest hotel, the Hotel Carlton.

The hotel was built in 1913 by the grandson of the Czar, who’d fallen in love with a commoner, reliquished his claim to the throne, and moved to the South of France with his love. He didn’t find any suitable hotels there, so he had this one built! It has hosted some interesting conferences over the years, including the meeting which led to the organization of the League of Nations.

The service so far has been impeccable; our luggage was delivered about five minutes after we got to the room (no “hint” for a tip, either); I’m having some shirts pressed for free, and every time we turn around, there’s a new goodie in the room.

Here’s their interior garden.

We took a walk down the Boulevard de la Croisette (the beachfront boulevard) after we’d unpacked and decompressed.

We returned to the hotel for the welcome reception for our tour, followed by a three-course dinner.

We have to be in the lecture room at 8:45am, ready to go for the day’s touring. It’s going to be a rough week. :-)

We had thought about going to Marseille today before we leave the area, but it was market day, and it would have been a shame to miss the market. Instead, we washed our clothes and hung them outside to dry, complained to TheFork about the way we were stiffed by Le Naio last night (they gave me 1000 Yums (loyalty points) as an apology) and finally walked into town bright and early just before 11. On the way, we stopped at the Plage du Bestouan to scope it out as a place to try our new swimwear. Once we got to the market, we spent an hour or so there (and a bunch of Euros) – it’s much more fun than the Los Gatos Farmers’ Market. Diane bought a nice shirt, we both bought espadrilles, and we picked up the makings for dinner tonight – smoked salmon, Morbier, and strawberries to go along with the spaghetti that our host Denise had supplied.

We took everything back to the AirBnB, then walked back into town for a simple steak lunch at Le Golfe. Then we picked up wine for dinner at the Petit Casino market and headed back to the AirBnB to pack, watch The Studio, and make dinner.

After dinner, we felt the need to walk again, but we didn’t want to go into town, so we turned right as we left the AirBnB and walked about a mile – on a flat road! – and ended up on the other side of the Calanque de Port-Miou from where we were yesterday.

We walked along the shore for a few hundred meters, but decided not to test out this sign and returned home for the night.

It was nice having a quiet day; tomorrow, the pace picks up.