Jardins de Salagon

A few weeks ago we packed a picnic and went to the Salagon Gardens with Sue and Scott. The gardens surround a 12th century church. There are different theme gardens including a medieval garden, an aroma garden, and a world garden showing plants from all over the world. The world garden was our favorite!

Cassis

   

The Calanques along the Mediterranean was our favorite place that Ben and I visited the first time we came to France, so we were very excited to plan a trip back. This time we hiked a different stretch of the coast, starting in the town of Cassis. The town itself was really cool and we spent a day hanging out and snorkeling at the beach in town, which happens to be right underneath a castle built into the cliffs. 

Cassis has three Calanques, or inlets. The first, Port Miou is filled with boats, and the second, Port Pin, is filled with people. The third, Calanque en Vau was our destination, and is only reachable by foot or by kayak. We chose to go by foot which was about a two hour hike up and down the cliffs. 

We saw a lot of crabs scurrying around the rocks, and Ben saw an eel! We also saw a cormorant which swam right by us. 

Kayaking in the Gorges du Verdon

France has experienced some record high temps this summer so we've been hanging around the water any chance we get. Luckily we're quite close to the Gorges du Verdon, the Grand Canyon of Europe. At this point we've kayaked most of it. The places we've started out are in the yellow boxes in the map above. 

The caves in the area around the town of Quinson have been occupied intermittently since the Lower Paleolithic period 400.000 years ago. There's a really neat Prehistoric museum in Quinson that Ben and I went to the last time we were in France. 

This is in Greoux les Bains, just west of Lac Esparron, not quite on the map.

Here we are at Lac Esparron. 

And these are some photos of the stretch of Canyon near Moustier Sainte Marie. The brilliant green color is from fluoride and micro-algae in the water.