Sunday October 14, 2012

Today we woke up in the port of Toulon, France. After exiting our ship Jill and I headed towards a small waiting area in order to cross the bay and reach Toulon.

Upon reaching Toulon Jill and I needed to find the train station in order to reach Cassis, which was a out 30 minutes to the southwest of Toulon. Unfortunately France is not as friendly to Americans as Spain was, signs were in French only (no English in small type anywhere), and finding an English speaking resident was impossible. If we were going to make it today I was going to have to recall my French language classes from high school, from 16 years ago.

We eventually found the train station and were able to purchase round trip tickets to/from Cassis from a train employee whose English was as broken as my French. Needless to say Jill and I were still worried that we were going to end up lost somewhere in France. To our surprise we ended up in Cassis, our confidence was slowly comi g back.

Parked in the front of the train station in Cassis was a old Japanese man driving a tour bus that was headed to the casino. After a scenic drive throw Cassis we were dropped off in front of the casino, Jill was excited but now we could rely on Rick Steves to get us to the city. If you don't know who Rick Steves is, he's the Oprah Winfrey of European travel. We saw so many people walking around with the same book we had its not even funny.

Upon reaching the beachfront of Cassis we found a bunch of little storefronts, some selling clothing or other merchandise but the majority were small cafes. We stopped at one that caught our eye and Jill and I enjoyed some paninnis. Not the Permanti Brothers type paninnis that American are accustomed to, these were a footlong French baguette that had cheese and whatever else in it, and was aced back in the wrapper so it could be eaten with one hand as you walked. Jill and I also shared a small carafe of wine and a chocolate crepe.

After lunch Jill and I had enough time to walk around for a little bit and take some scenic photos before having to retrace our steps in order to make it back to Toulon. The trip back to Toulon was a lot easier since we now established land makers. As Jill and I walked back to the taxi boat we were able to enjoy Toulon a little more and laugh at the fact that us in Toulon was probably like a French person that didn't speak English visiting Napoleon, Ohio. The Toulon locals that saw us laughing probably rolled their eyes at us and cursed Americans under their breath but we didn't care, we had successfully navigated ourselves to and from our ship without anybody having to call a search party for us. Chalk one up for Team Buehner!

When we got back to our room Jill and I had enough time to freshen up before attending our first formal dinner night. At dinner we met a retired couple sitting next to us from England (Tony and Norma). I'm beginning to think that everyone on this boat is fun to talk to and share stories with. Oh, and the medium rare prime beef is amazing. As Jill and I walked out of the restaurant we stopped and had some photos taken of us. We then headed back to our room for some well needed rest. Tomorrow, Naples and Monte Carlo.