The Camargue, Mediterranean

The Camargue is the vast marsh land in the south of France. It is populated by wild horses, flamingos (no joke) and sun tanned people. It contains salt dunes, which are exactly what they sound like. They are mounds of salt shaped by the wind to form dunes. Oh and did I mention that the town is completely white, making it blinding to look at.
The place we visited was Saint-Marie de la Mer, which has another claim to fame; it is where Mary Magdalene and her maidens washed up on the beach. They have a festival commemorating it every year and the town is named after her.

We were going to go on a bike ride around the Camargue but we got sidetracked and stayed on the beach instead. Mom visited the Church where the relics of Saint Sarah are kept. We sat at a restaurant and ate Paella while watching the waves lap up on the shore. The Camargue, from what I have seen of it, seems to be a very peaceful, empty place.

Cassis, Mediterranean

We visited Cassis twice. The first time was on one of our very first trips out of Aix. It was the middle of February, windy and the water was freezing cold but Bridget and I got in anyway. After weeks of not doing anything except go to school and sleep it was, as Bridget sarcastically put it, "very refreshing."
Watching the dark sea beneath the gray horizon one could imagine what it was like for the Greeks or Romans being washed up on the rocky shores of this strange land.


The second time we went it was with our relatives, the Kozelas. The sun was shining this time and we watched sail boats bobbing in the water as we ate our Boullibaise (a famous French fish stew, try saying that 5 times fast!) on the harbor. We lay on the beach soaking up the sun and Bridget and I braved the water again, although no one else would come in even though we told them how "warm" it was.