Bonjour from Cassis in the sunny south of France. It has been a few days since the last update so here goes….
We spent the last couple of days at Montestigliano just hanging around, I had bad hay fever and asthma (random as I don’t normally suffer) so we took it easy by the pool and enjoyed the estate.
The kids at Montestigliano
Montestigliano at dusk
We did manage to visit Restaurant Catani in the little village of Orgia which we have been to a few times before – best food ever – it is still just as good.
Outside Restaurant Catani
Delicious sage and butter ravioli
The famous Tuscan wild boar stew that we adore
Nonna’s ciocolata torte aka Mike’s heart attack on a plate dessert (was sooo good)
Best tiramisu ever
On Saturday we headed north and dropped into Firenze (Florence) for a quick look around before making it to Zoagli, our home for the night on the Ligurian Coast. It was super cute but unfortunately we hit our first rain and ended up eating at a pizza restaurant huddled outside under an umbrella! The rain stopped and we went for a walk after dinner along the coastal path, it was just gorgeous.
Florence (Firenze)
Riding a carousel in Florence
The duomo at Florence
Dome at Florence duomo
The cute town of Zoagli
The next day we decided to play a ‘game’ to pass the time in the car, the kids love it when we go through a tunnel, so we started playing ‘count the tunnel’ – well drove us nearly bloody nuts, there are 149 tunnels between Zoagli and the French border in case you ever need to know, the longest is 1.9km! The roads are amazing though – it is pretty much a whole lot of mountain ranges but the road is straight – they’ve just tunnelled through mountains and built fantastically high bridges across the mountain passes, pretty clever engineers those Italians!
Tunnel number 72!
By then it was lunchtime so we went down to Monaco and got our supermarket sandwiches to eat by the super yachts ha ha. It was interesting to see but I also felt pretty grossed out by all that wealth sitting in a few square miles of the world, that could make such a difference if even a little bit of it was used to help others. Like seriously, who needs a 3 storey boat with it’s own monogrammed welcome door mat?! S thought it was very cool to be in 3 countries in one day, you could see the little mind ticking away trying to process it 🙂
Sammies by the superyachts in Monaco
We drove a bit further around the French Riviera to St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, a gorgeous seaside town and visited Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild – a big old mansion and beautiful gardens that were once owned by Baroness Rothschild. Very cool and that whole area is so beautiful.
By St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat
Back to the road and we made it to Cassis, a small fishing/port village not far from Marseilles and a great B&B, our home for 3 nights. Cassis is quite swanky so people watching is a big past time, but it is also famous for the calanques – huge limestone cliff faces with stunning deep water inlets, a bit like fjords.
Delicious breakfast
The gorgeous seaside town of Cassis
Today we explored some of the calanques – we did a hike through one and had a picnic lunch, then this afternoon went on a boat ride to explore some more. The kids absolutely LOVED it, it was only a smallish boat and big ocean swells so we got drenched but they were so happy! Poppa will definitely get requests to take the boat out this summer! We grabbed dinner while watching Germany vs Portugal (what a caning) and the kids are now snoring their heads off.
Boats moored in Cassis
Picnic lunch at the calanques
Out on the boat
The boys on the boat
One of the beaches in Cassis
Family selfie goes pear-shaped on the mini train at Cassis
The beautiful calanques
Tomorrow we are planning on going to the beach, yay and on Wednesday it’s another long drive over to the Dordogne region of France where we are camping for six nights. S is beside herself with excitement! We are also really looking forward to catching up with the Knoops/van der Veeken family who are coming all the way from the Netherlands to meet up with us 🙂
