Big plans today; get off the boat first thing, rent a car, head to Pont Du Gard, back to Le Baux, down to Cassis, and make sure we are back at the ship by 4 pm. A little uncertainty about this whole deal: not many people rent cars in Marseilles, will there be taxis to take us from the ship to the rental car place, etc.
The view from the Cove Balcony, Pano-style, circa 5:40 am…
We are up at 5:45, have breakfast from the buffet. Cpher is back in omelet heaven and Matthew has the nastiest scrambled eggs I have ever tasted….was irked that he didn’t eat them and when I had a bite totally had to take him off the hook for it, very powdery, ugh!. But, we are the second family off the boat. Carnival employee confirms one of our fears, we have to take an expensive shuttle to the Old Port to get a taxi to get to the rental car……turns out she’s wrong though and the eminently more helpful Port employee walks us over (maybe 100 feet) to where we hop in a taxi. 20 minutes, and euros, later, we are at the rental car place, 20 minutes ahead of schedule. Hertz opens at 8, and we are ready and waiting.
and waiting…..and waiting….and waiting. 8:00 comes and goes, 8:15. 8:30. 8:45 and we decide to bail….at this point if the Hertz person ever shows up we really won’t have the time to accomplish everything we want to do.
Epic French Fail.
We did, however, have a back up plan knowing that the first plan could come off the tracks pretty easily (never thought it would be because they wouldn’t open on time!….thought we wouldn’t be able to get there easily!)
So, we walk (about a mile) back down to the Old Port from the railway station. Stop at a chocolate store, the boys picked up an assortment of lollipops that looked awfully good!
Get to the Old Port and walk into and past the fish market…..Matthew got a kick out of this, guys just dumping their catch out on tables….this was the first stand, some of the later guys had some seriously big fish…..
Opera House? Not sure…this is right across from where we waited to take our boat ride…
The last part of the rental car trip was supposed to be to Cassis, to see some of the Calanques….basically giant limestone formations…think fjords for the general idea. You can see the Cathedral of Notre Dame in the background here….
Looking back north towards the end of the Old Port…
The forts one either end of the entrance into the Old Port
It’s Saturday, seems like anybody who had a sailboat was trying to get out on the water today….
The archipelago of Frioul….the building are Le chateau d’If, which the tour stuff says is the castle from the Count of Monte Cristo….I guess I’ll have to read that now.
Checking out Cap Croisette….not a whole lot of labels coming, just the best of the pictures I took today on the Iphone…
Cathedrale la Major
Random Thoughts:
- Have never in my life had to step into a street to hail a cab…until today. Pretty happy with myself over how it worked out; there were a bunch of people trying to get a cab and I told Fric and Frac that if I opened a door to a cab, they had better hop right in, so, the cab pulls up, I open the back door and they hop in while this Italian couple starts talking to the driver. The last thing I heard was some other language that must have been “this is our cab” as I hopped in the front seat and Mom and Fric and Frac are in the back. Possession is 99 and 44/100 of the law; fortune favors the bold!
- Lost two foosball games to Fric and Frac. Not good.
- Suzanne says we missed the stuff she wanted to do so now we have to come back. Damned French Hertz Fail
Random Breeze Items:
Deck 10, Aft
We usually miss the crowds at dinner; we eat earlier than most. Matthew and Mom had spaghetti, Dad had teriyaki salmon, and Cpher had udon noodles with chicken and shrimp. More on dinner at the end of this post…
We went to the show; “The Brits”…music from the British Invasion. The biggest improvement in this show over the ones we saw on the Dream is what you can see here; the big rear projection screens in the background. They were bright, they were animated, and they were used really well in the show to augment what was happening on stage.
The end of the show….
The sports bar in the casino….Greece 1, Russia 0 in the 2nd half of the Euro Cup group stage. A lot of Russians on board, not so many Greeks or Greek ancestry…..pretty lively though!
Sunset
Here’s hoping that the story of the end of the night doesn’t become the story of the next four days…..Matthew complained of stomach ache / nausea when he came to the room. He lied down, Mom and Dad went up to the casino for 30 minutes, and not even 15 minutes later Cpher comes running up and tells us he threw up.
We hope it’s maybe a little seasickness (the boat is not moving) combined with too much food in the wrong order. Matthew did not make it to the toilet, so, there’s quite a mess in the room, and Suzanne and I did a lot of cleaning to try and keep the norovirus police from coming down on us like a hammer. Man, I hope that’s not it. Matthew has been eating like a machine, so, hopefully that’s all that this is.
