Marseille, France
Our first port was Marseille, France. (Click to see a map). We lucked out with beautiful weather. We took a shuttle from the Cruise ship port to the main Marina of town. It was beautiful.
Jared had already made arrangements for us to privately rent a speed-boat and driver for a 4-hour tour of the Marseille coastline. We met him at 11:00, after a little fun shopping around town.
The guys… Jared, Doug, Brian, Chris
The ladies… Terri, Missy, Lisa, Geneva
Right outside the marina is the Château d'If. “The Château d'If is a fortress (later a prison) located on the island of If, the smallest island in the Frioul Archipelago situated about a mile offshore Marseille in southeastern France. It is famous for being one of the settings of Alexandre Dumas' adventure novel The Count of Monte Cristo.” Unfortunately, not open on this day so we just sped around it and continued on.
The rock formations and cliffs were cool but the water was incredible! The most gorgeous blues and turquoise.
In a perfect little cove, our speed boat stopped. Mr. French boat driver opened up a can of pringles and broke them up sprinkling them on the water. Within seconds the fish appeared and soon we were donning ‘shorties’ and jumping in with snorkel gear.
This is what we could see from over the side of the boat… beautifully clear all the way down.
After snorkeling and eating lunch in the boat we headed to another spot. There were some gloomy clouds hanging over these cliffs for great ‘atmosphere’ but most of the sky was still bright blue.
In the above right picture at the very bottom is the dark entrance to the ‘blue lagoon’. The boat stopped and once again we donned our already wet shorties and swam in for a look.
The way the sunlight comes in -- makes the water in the cave a gorgeous bright blue. It was fun. Missy took some pictures with her waterproof camera that make me smile…
Back inside the boat we tried to dry off a bit and get some warmer clothes on as we took off again…
Right after checking out these little villages along the coast we sped up heading for the Marseille marina. Chris and I were among those up front and I was snapping pictures every couple minutes with my camera resting in my lap. So… this is where our excursion gets really exciting. Another boat crosses our path ahead of us. We can see it’s wake. We’re getting closer but it doesn’t look too bad. Then ‘a little too late’ we can see that we are going to hit the wake straight on and it’s going to get us wet. I grabbed my camera from my lap and turned my body to the back hoping to shield my camera from any splash. But ‘splash’ isn’t really quite the right word. A cold wave of water crashed over our shoulders getting us AND MY CAMERA soaking wet. SOAKING – as in: entirely drenched. I screamed ‘CHRIS!’ like my child had fallen overboard and instinctively jumped up. Everyone grabbed for their camera bags, phones and bags as I made my way to the back of the boat. Everything was wet. All our towels. All our clothes. All our shoes. At least 8 inches of water sloshed around our feet. I used the dry corner of a towel to try to dry my camera. I was not hopeful… but after taking a half second longer to turn on than it should have, it simply worked with no problem at all. Such a blessing. I am SOOOO grateful. I wish we could have a video of that moment – because (now that my camera is fine) it was pretty funny….
Originally we were going to be dropped off at the Marina with a 20 minute shuttle back to the cruise ship… but because he felt bad, our guide said he’d take us right into the cruise ship port. I don’t really think speedboats are authorized to sail right on in there – but he did it anyway – and dropped us off steps from our boat. That was good since we were still wringing out our Cruise ship towels and drenched clothes. He told us he was sorry about the big splash but we still tipped him great. It was SUCH a gorgeous fun day. Nothing like a near catastrophe to be one of the highlights of the trip.
