Day 13 - still
From Menton we had to take 3 different trains to get to Cassis. One of them was late which almost made us miss the last train. Still not sure how we managed to catch it. The whole shlepping bikes from train to train was a real hassle. To be avoided if possible.We did eventually make it to Cassis and stepped off the train into ferocious winds. Apparently they occasionally get that here. We rolled down from the train station to our place for the next three nights.
Nancy splurged on this one and got us a room in a really nice B&B. The proprietress and her family were super nice.
Quite a view from our patio
Looking up from the pool deck to our balcony
We had booked a table at a place on the water so that we could watch the fireworks that night (it was Bastille day). With it staying light so long that meant our dinner reservation was at 9:30. So we strolled around town to see the sights and kill some time. Turns out the fireworks were called off because of the high winds anyhow. That meant we had a late dinner outside in the cold wind - not ideal.
Another "rock" beach
Now that sounds good
Days 14-15
Next morning we went to the market and got some snacks and other stuff.
I was tempted by this, but went with something local instead
While we were wandering around, we found a guy selling cheap luggage. That is one thing we needed in order to get home - since we no longer had our cardboard luggage to haul the bike gear in. We acquired a bag that we could put all our stuff in and it even had wheels - only 30 euro. Score.
Had to get my feet in the Mediterranean - it was quite cold
We still had one thing to take care of - getting to Paris.
The plan for that was to rent a car, drive to the Beziers aiport, take a Ryan Air flight to an airport outside of Paris, take the Ryan Air bus into Paris and walk to our hotel. We don't do anything the simple way.
To make all that happen we had to rent a car. Cassis is too small to have car rental so we had to get to the next village over - La Ciotat. We could have taken the train, but the train station was really far from the car rental place. Hey, we still had the bikes. So...one more bike trip.
We decided to ride our bikes up to the big bluff outside of town and continue on over to La Ciotat, get the car, put the bikes in it and drive back to our B&B. Should work. So we headed up to the road to the bluff. I swear this thing was like a 20% grade in spots. Even without all of our gear on the bikes we were in our granny going up it.
You can see how this road drops off
Closed? No!
Think of a Mini Cooper - then think smaller. At first it seemed there was no way we would get 2 bikes in there, But these cars are make to be practical. Pulling the wheels off and stacking everything got it done. We drove back and were really done with the bikes now.
Small, but practical
We had a very nice dinner that night in a quiet little place off of the main drag, but still on the water.
Next day was kayaking. Cassis is known for their cliffs (calanques) that are on the sea. They are best seen by water, so we rented a kayak and did the tour.
A nice secluded beach that you can share with 100s of strangers
Day 16-17
Next morning we left early to make the 2.5 hour drive to Beziers to catch our plane. Our hostess was kind enough to supply us with a breakfast to-go. I'm not sure if we would have been able to successfully complete this drive in "the old days". Thankfully, we now have Google maps and their offline maps option. I downloaded the offline map, put in our start and finish and had navigation the whole way - except for that one panicky couple of minutes when my phone lost the GPS signal.Most of the freeways we went on were toll roads, so we ended up figuring out the toll system. Between gas and tolls, it is rather expensive to drive here. The Citroen was actually pretty fun to drive, but more at home in the city than on the open road.
After some confusion about where to park our rental car, we got into the very small airport and caught our flight to Paris Beauvais Tille airport.
One runway and walk to the plane
Once at the airport we had to scurry over to where the bus to Paris was - apparently they have a limited number of seats. We got on and an hour later we were in Paris. Fortunately our hotel was fairly close to where the buses parked (Port Malliot), so a little bit of walking got us there.
We are obviously not in the country any more
A sad sign of the times
That famous Arc de Triomphe
Notre Dame
Gourmet Chocolate Shop of the Ile de St. Louis
One of many Vespa dealers!
Montmartre
Chad had suggested that we take one of the cruises up the Seine. That was a really good suggestion. We got to see some of the sights from a different viewpoint and got a little history at the same time. And, we didn't have to walk.
Day 18
Time to head out.
Conveniently, Charles de Gaulle airport is wayyy outside the city. Our options were metro (changes at 3 stations), bus or taxi. We went with bus. Bought our tickets online and headed out to find the bus stop. It was not where I thought it was. We wandered around a bit following signs that seemed to point to where it was - but didn't. Finally we stopped someone who looked like they were leaving town and fortunately they knew where we needed to be. Got on the bus, got to the airport.
We used frequent flyer miles to do this trip. Since American appears to hate their customers, they made it VERY hard to do this trip using miles. In the end we had to start our trip in Germany and were able to end our trip from Paris - but we had put up enough miles to fly Business/First class on the way home. I've never flown business class overseas so this was a revelation.
Since we were early for our flight we got to relax in the Admirals lounge which had all kinds of food and drink - even a full bar.
Once on the plane, we had our own little pods with a full slate of movies to choose from, good food and drink and the ability to lay completely flat for sleeping. This made the first class on US flights seem like slumming.
yeah, those are Bose noise canceling headphones
I was so comfy, I actually wanted this flight to keep going. So this is what travel is like if you have tons of cash (or miles) to spend. Alas, we got into New York and had to rush to not miss our flight to DFW. The change at DFW went fine with no drama until we were coming into Phoenix - where we saw a dust storm coming into the city.
Welcome home.
As I reviewed the trip for this blog it really brought into focus the amount of work and planning that Nancy did to make this happen.The complexity of the trip (different locations/multiple transfer methods) was VERY high. I expect it would have cost us plenty to have someone put this together for us. And it all went without a hitch. I'd say she did an outstanding job. If that whole professor thing doesn't pan out Nancy definitely has a career in vacation planning.
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