Ahh, Cassis!

This morning, we took a bus to Cassis, a village right along the Mediterranean, about 45 minutes from Aix. It was at one time a Roman city, although Mme Scott (professeur en residence this semester, with whom I've taken several classes at Vanderbilt and really, really like) said that there aren't really any ruins because people have always lived here and built on top of them.

This is a picture of Mme Scott's granddaughter, Destiny, who came with her to France and is going to school here for the year. For some reason, she really took a liking to me, so we sat together on the bus. J'aime Destiny.

Here's a view of the water


There was a parade going on in Cassis, which a pretty happening little town. There were lots of shops and such, although we didn't spend a ton of time walking around because we wanted to go to the beach.

We took a boat tour of the calanques (inlets), for which Cassis is known

The coastline is so rugged because, apparently, all of the building in Marseille were cut from these rocks. In some places, there are chutes of a sort cut into the cliffs so that rock could be cut and easily dropped into boats to transport
The water is so blue because all of the cliffs are limestone. Si jolie!
Then we went to the beach...the water was freezing, but we went in anyway, and I even ran in and went under, which my friends thought was crazy. The beach is made of tiny rocks, which were pretty painful when we were walking back on nearly numb feet. You'd think it'd hurt less that way, but it doesn't. Still worth it though.
Elyse and the shoulder of Danielle, another V-i-F student, who I knew vaguely before this trip from a class and like a lot.
Just a couple of pics of the city. I have way more, but I thought so many shots of calanques might get tiresome even though they're pretty, and they take a while to upload.

When we got back to Aix, the once-a-month antique market that we had seen that morning was still going on, so we checked that out. Elyse was psyched since she had just asked one of our tuteurs (French students who are helping to orient us and also do tutor students who need the help. Did I explain this? can't remember. They're mostly our age or a few years older) last night if there would be an antique market. All in all, it was a very good day.

Oh, and Mme Scott wants to go back to Cassis to do a hike that leads up to the most impressive calanque, where you can jump in to swim! I definitely plan on participating. It'll probably be the weekend after next, since we already have a trip to Nice planned for next weekend.