France! (May 2006)

The sig.o. and I recently spent a week in France so that he could practice his French and turn 30 in style. I went along as witness to these events and can say with confidence that both goals were accomplished successfully. We never got on a train going the wrong way, or found ourselves staring at a plate of questionable squishy things, or even had to sleep in a basement. As for turning 30 in style...
I think we can claim some success there, too.
Most of our time in France was spent hiking, eating, and riding trains. Which really makes for a pretty nice vacation. We typically spent the morning collecting picnic provisions: fresh bread from a boulangerie, some local wine, cheese, and fresh local produce from the market. Pretty delicious. The markets themselves were full-sensory experiences. The fresh olive side was typically rather nicer than the fresh fish side, and the spice vendors were a joy to see and smell.
Right, so besides eating (and I haven't even mentioned the lethal ice cream), we did a bunch of hiking. We were mostly down on the Riviera, where the coastline is typically high and rocky. The Mediteranean was every bit as blue as the postcards claimed. In Antibes (east of Cannes, west of Nice), we hiked along a mostly paved path:
Even better was Cassis, a tiny tourist port town just south of Marseilles that had been recommended to us by a friend. One of the remarkable things about Cassis was the apparent lack of pollution. Despite the fact that the port was as stuffed with boats as it could be, the water was still clean. We even saw an octopus scuttling along the bottom of the port. All along the coast just west of Cassis are a series of narrow cliff-bound inlets called calanques that we hiked all up and down and through:

There's more, but I haven't learned to format this stuff yet and it's driving me bonkers