To visit the Camargue, that huge delta of the Rhone river which stretches ever further into the Mediterranean, has always been on my hit list. It’s not just because there is a Rolls Royce named after it, but it is also because, many years ago I “missed it,” while hitch hiking through the south of […]

The entire city of Arles is a museum unto itself. Yes, there is commerce and village life, but citizens and visitors alike live carefully among the ruins. The ruins, that is, of what was once a great Roman city. A magnificent colosseum, for example, dominates a rise in the centre of the old town, while

Unfortunately holidays come to an end – a necessary evil. For as Shakespeare said – If all the year were playing holidays,  To sport would be as tedious as to work;  I never want my “sport,” vacationing, to become tedious work, so I have holidays that end. However, you can ease the pain, by having

Midway through our week in Cassis, we decided to inquire about tickets to Arles. We had to vacate our apartment on the Saturday and planned to stay for a few days in Arles, before catching our flight home on the following Tuesday. Normally we would just walk to the train station. However, the station in

I mentioned in an earlier post about the quiet walks around the town of Cassis in the south of France. Here are some pictures. Most of the side streets in the old town near the harbour were very pretty, with lovely flowers, quaint entrances and cobbled walks. For more activity, there were several beaches close

For a small village, Cassis has an extensive list of “things to do.” I remember telling a neighbour, who had stopped in Cassis for lunch while on a tour of the south of France, that we had stayed there for a week. She was amazed that we could find enough to entertain us for that

Les Calanques is the name of the national park between Cassis and Marseilles, which was created to preserve the limestone fjords that jut into the sea at this end of the Cote D’Azur. With their magnificent white cliffs, azure inlets and rugged vegetation, Les Calanques are a national treasure well worth keeping in their natural

We decided to spend a week in Cassis on a whim. Actually a friend had given us a calendar by an artist who painted beautiful pictures of places in France and Italy. Cassis was one of the prettiest. I decided that it might be a nice place to spend some time based entirely on an

Somehow, I have always felt that there is a conspiracy between hotel clerks, taxi drivers, restaurateurs and tour guides. When we checked into our hotel on Friday night, we asked when the shuttle train to the airport left in the morning. Our hotel clerk immediately said that the train was not running on Saturday because