Toulon, France – November 30, 2013

It was a rough night on the Mediterranean Sea on our transit from Barcelona to Toulon, France, our first port of call. Although we were not too far offshore, and the wind was blowing from the shore out into the sea, it was gusting to around 30 knots according to the ship’s weather information on the TV. Our cabin as a little forward of mid-ship, and we may be above a stabilizer, which they must have been using  help keep the ship steady since the wind was blowing from the port side, which is our side of the ship. Most of the night there was a strange shuddering sound which we have not heard on any of our previous cruises. Our cabin is a little more to the middle of the ship than on past cruises, but only by about 15 cabins.  I doubt the noise we heard was specifically localized to this part of the ship and only being heard by us based on where our cabin is located  on this cruise. We heard the noise at times all during night, but were too tired to let it bother us much.

We arrived in the port of La Seyne Sur Mer at about 7:00 AM, and the ship proceeded to back into our spot along the pier. It was as we had surmised, we were not actually docking in the portion of the port closest to the city of Toulon, it was across the harbor, and the city was only accessible via a $15.00 round trip ticket on a special port ferry. How nice and convenient for some ferry businesses, have the ship dock far away and then charge $15.00 to get to the port city listed.

We did not care, we were heading to the Europcar car rental office in La Seine Sur Mer, close to the docks we were at. We finished getting ready and headed off to the breakfast buffet for a hardy breakfast prior to our journey in the rental car. It was not the best weather in the port this morning, it was windy, about 45 degrees with overcast skies, and 70% rain was forecast for the afternoon. However, the sun did come out a little, there were some patches of blue skies between the clouds, so we decided to go ahead with our plans to rent the car.

We headed for the gangway at about 8;00 AM, and had to wait for about 10 minutes before everything was in place to allow passengers to disembark the ship. While waiting, we started talking to a couple who were from Dallas, and they were also going to the Europcar office, so we decided to split a taxi ride, which I had read was about Euro 10.00. They had actually emailed the rental office and were told to call them for a pick-up from the ship.  We all decided it would be quicker to go by taxi and not take the extra time waiting for a shuttle, which we have historically found to be delayed in getting anywhere on-time. I had read where the rental agency would reimburse the taxi fare, but in our case, when I mentioned that we had ‘”arrived by taxi” when checking out the car, the rental agent did not seem inclined to offer any reimbursement, but did offer to drop us off back at the ship after we returned the car.

We rented a Toyota Yaris Hybrid, which had an automatic transmission, rare for European car rentals.  It was my belief that these hybrid cars must all have automatic transmission in order to run efficiently between the electric and motorized modes. It turned out to be nice having the automatic as we eventually ended up on some very narrow and steep roads, more on that later.

We had programed several of our destinations into the GPS we brought from home, which includes Europe Maps.  However, when we tried to find them in the “favorites” on the GPS, they were gone. We never did figure that out, but did not end up needing them anyway, we just used the “search nearby” feature on the GPS to find our first stop in Cassis.

We were trying to head to the Cassis Harbor, since it was the starting point of some of the accesses to the Calanques, which are inlets in the natural rock cliffs. We took some very narrow winding roads as instructed by the GPS, and made it to the small harbor. There were a lot of tour boats there, but not many people since it is the off season. The tour boats were large, open boats with bench seats to transport people on water tours of the calanques.

Since it was fairly early in the morning, just a few of the locals were out and about having coffee and breakfast in the open cafes. We walked around some, mainly looking for the WC, or water closet (toilet). Stephanie asked about a public WC at the visitor information center and we were told it was near a fountain in the small square, however, after searching all sides of the square, we could not locate it. We went into a small grocery and asked another man inside, who we found out could speak good English, and his response was it was by the waterfront. Again, we searched a lot, but did not find it anywhere, so we resorted to asking at a restaurant, and they were kind enough to let us use their facility.

With that task accomplished, we got back into our car and headed to one of the Calanques, which is also used as a harbor for boats, called Calanques Port Miou. We found a parking lot and started hiking the trails to find some of the more scenic areas along the coast. Some of this area had once been used as a quarry according to the trail information signage. Initially the trail was smooth and somewhat flat, but then it started to go uphill, and was quite rocky. The rock formation in the area seemed to generally be limestone, and in some areas, it was worn very smooth from the hikers. We were glad it was not wet, the rocks would have been extremely slippery.

We walked quite a way and took a lot of pictures. Part of the trail went down into a small Calanques, and there was a sandy beachfront about 60 feet wide. We did not go any farther along the trail, and headed back, but found another trail heading in a direction to go farther out onto a peninsula.

By this time, we had already spent about 2 hours hiking and taking pictures.  We decided that since this was such a nice and peaceful area, we did not want to go into any of the other large cities we had originally had  planned to drive to on the port of call, especially since the weather forecast was calling for some rain later in the afternoon. The weather actually cleared some while we were hiking, and added to the scenic views.

We found another trail along the harbor that stayed lower down and closer to the water, so we walked along that trail for about a mile. Afterward, we headed back to the car to try and go by road to the area across the narrow inlet of the harbor to the other side since it was more exposed to the views of the Mediterranean Sea. Once o=n the other side, we ended up in a large parking area.  From there, and we walked up to a small area on another long, narrow peninsula of land. Along the way, we visited a small restored church,  and past the church was a large open area looking out onto the sea.

After a few more pictures, we headed back to the car to drive back to La Seyne Sur Mer. It was only about 28 kilometers, so we were back into the city area in less than 30 minutes since the speed limit on the roads was  130 km/hr. We saw a grocery store, and decided to stop in and have a look at what they had to offer. However, it was a very small store, mostly fresh vegetables, and some dry goods, but not much in the way of sodas and juices.

We located another grocery store using the GPS, and it was just a few kilometers drive before we arrived to find what ended up being the French equivalent of our WalMart called Carefour.  It was more crowded than any WalMart Superstore we had ever been to, it was hard to even find a parking spot. We went in and spent about 30 minutes looking around and purchasing a couple of bottles of French wine since this was our only French port of call. They also carried Canada Dry Ginger Ale, so we picked up about three bottles of that, finding it much cheaper than purchasing the cans of ginger ale on the ship.

Upon leaving the store we found that it had started do drizzle, so after packing up our supplies in our backpacks, we headed back to the rental car agency. There was a gas station right next door, so we filled up the tank, not having used much gas since we had not traveled very far, and the car was a hybrid. Unfortunately, no one was at the car rental office when we tried to ask where to leave the car.   There was not any room to park it out in front of the office, so we took it across the street to another lot, but no one was there either. We waited several minutes and the lot attendant arrived in another rental car, probably having dropped another renter off at the cruise ship. We were a little concerned about the gas gauge, it was very delayed in showing the tank was full, so much so that the attendant wrote that it was only 7/8 full on the car return form. We tried to explain that we had filled it up, but between his limited English, and our even more limited French, it was not working. We went back across the street, and the rental office person was also back, and could speak good English. We convinced her that they did not need to charge us to fuel the car, that it was the “slow”gauge. However, I think there was still some doubt in their minds. The attendant took us back to the port in our same car, and after driving a couple of kilometers, the gauge was now reading over full, and he pointed that out, understanding finally what we had been trying to make them understand. He now seemed happy and so were we.

He dropped us off at the ship and we were back on board by about 4:00 PM. We headed to the room to relax a little before going to the buffet for a late lunch. We brought back some chips and salsa to our cabin to have with some adult refreshments, it was too cold, windy and rainy to enjoy this snack on the balcony.

In a bit, we headed to the hot tub, our legs were quite sore from all of the hiking on the hilly trails in Cassis. After getting cleaned up, we headed to the buffet, again too tired to spend time going to the dining room for a more formal dinner. Again, we were not the only ones tired from the day at port, the buffet was very crowded. Plus, we had not seen many items of interest on the dining room menu for last night or today.  It is possible that they are not offering any special meal items due to the long port days, and late port departure times. People don’t want to miss any “special” meal items, and they are also too tired to go to dinner after a long day off of the ship.

After dinner we went to listen to a great classical guitar player in the atrium, and then it was back to the room to work on the blog, and turn in early. We did notice that the seas had become very rough, and when we looked at the ship’s weather report we could see why. They were reporting winds of about 45 knots, with gusts to 60 knots. We felt that most of the night on the way to Livorno, our next stop.

Since the internet on the ship is slow, we will not be posting many pictures until we have time to get onto the internet when usage is low, and the seas are hopefully calmer. We will go back and place pictures in each post, and also add photo albums for the ports of call, as we are able.

To view more photos from today’s post, here is a link to the Photo Album for Toulon, or you can access it via the menu on the top right.