July 28: Cassis Cliff-jumping take 2, and Sweating to Harry Potter

A rough start to this day, and a rough end.

I had stayed up late last night working on the blog, and it took longer than predicted to finish. Meanwhile, Beth fell asleep. We’ve learned over the years that it’s best when we go to bed at the same time; Beth sleeps better, and we stay more connected as a couple. And despite my best efforts, I’m never quiet enough to get in bed without waking her up, which often wrecks her sleep the rest of the night, and creates resentment that lingers til morning. Then we can get into a crazy cycle: Beth expresses her displeasure, I get defensive, she doesn’t feel understood, I feel like a failure… you get the picture. But this morning, sitting on the lovely terrace of our suite, we seemed to work through the conflict OK, and were better connected by the time kids needed to wake up.

We opted for breakfast at the hotel, and it was a lovely spread of bread and pastries, with preserves, fruit salad, creamy yogurt, and morning drinks including fresh squeezed OJ again!

After checking out of both hotels, we drove towards another part of Cassis, as our hotel parking had also expired. We had another rough start to our outing here, as Thane had strong desire to connect with his girlfriend Amelia back home, but was having some tech challenges over the 8h time zone difference, and this affected his mood for the next hour. Beth was feeling a bit woozy, so she went off to get fresh air, but it was hard to find out where she went, and I was a little upset by that. Faith was needing a toilet, but there wasn’t one in sight… Travel setbacks.

The outing itself was pretty cool - a walking/hiking spot along one of the smaller Calanques, which are finger-like rock formations made by the erosion of river water but then the spaces between the “fingers” have been backfilled with ocean. It was called the Sentier du Petit Prince (Little Prince Trail), named in honour of the author of a famous children’s novel, Antoine de St-Exupéry, who died in a plane crash very close to these shores of Cassis in 1945. Le Petit Prince was required reading for all four of us during our French immersion studies (we’ll see if Faith ends up needing to read it too). This outing also turned out to be a better spot to attempt cliff-jumping again.

Lunch via grocery store, eaten out of the back of car. Included Mars ice cream bars. As Luke put it: “Where have you been all my life?”

2 hour drive to Pégomas, north of Cannes, to check into our AirBnB. Tricky to find; GPS sent us via a road under terrible repair, didn’t help the AirBnB posting had the imprecise address number. Met by our AirBnB host who showed us around the property. Very beautiful location with a great vista of the town and sunset behind the foothills. Challenging, however, to learn that despite the AirBnB site stating differently, there was no air conditioning!

We stayed in to watch the last instalment of the Harry Potter movie franchise (Faith’s first time), so we would be finished by the time we go to Harry Potter exhibit in London next week. It was a sweaty affair, watching the movie in 30 degree heat. We are hoping that the fans and the open windows will allow for enough sleep overnight. Hoping too that the mosquito repellent (and repellent stickers - thanks Grandma Lorraine!) works too, as the windows have no bug screens.