The South of France

We made our first trip down to the south of France on the Mediterranean Coast last week. Thursday morning we flew from Paris down to Marseille, hired a car and then made the hour drive around to Cassis (where Rach was going to a conference) and then onto La Ciotat (where we were staying)

I have to say it was pretty nice, I went and hit the local sports store to grab myself a snorkel so I could go snorkelling in the Mediterranean, as the weather was pretty hot, (32 - 33 degrees)
We went to a few "beaches" (I use quotation marks as I would hardly describe them as a beach in the traditional sense, as we are used to in Aus)

This particular part of France is famous for 'Calanques' which according to wikipedia, is a geologic formation in the form of a deep valley with steep sides, typically of limestone , in part submerged by the sea. It can be considered a Mediterranean fijord. So I went swimming in a few Calanques, and it was pretty cool, and there were heaps of awesome sea creatures to look at and generally have a relaxing snorkel.
This is a small Calanque we went swimming in

We went to a couple of other more normal sorta beaches with sand and stuff that were pretty choc o bloc full of people on the weekend. (and chicks sunbathing topless, which is the thing to do here apparently)

Generally its a pretty nice area, there are a lot of people with much browner skin than me, and a lot of people with much bigger boats than me as well. (There were some enormous boats in the marina in La Ciotat)