Monday Sept 9, 2024, Day trip to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (on the Mediterranean Sea)

The Mediterranean Sea is an hour and 40 minutes away, so since we are this close, we should go dip our toes. We skipped breakfast and stopped at Marie Blachere Boulangerie on the way out of town and got a couple of chocolate croissants. Then Deb pointed Google Maps at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (no tolls please since we don’t know how to do that yet) and we had a pleasant drive to the sea, except for the little busy section going through Avignon.

We found easy parking outside of town and walked in. This area is famous for wild white horses, bullfighting, and flamingos. We saw lots of white horses, one brass bull and a ton of flamingos.

The town also had a huge market going on today which may explain the huge crowds. We found the beach (and hence the sea) and there were not many people there. We spent some time wandering around the market and then found a shop selling sandwiches and cokes and walked back to the beach to enjoy lunch by the sea. We got coffee at a little bodega and met an older (80 and 81 years old) British couple. These two were wonderful and it was nice to have someone to speak English with again. After the coffee break we ran into the other Untours couple in the area (from NC) and chatted with them for a bit.

We stopped at a wildlife reserve on the way out of town that had flamingos and other water birds. Very nice place and not crowded at all.

Then back home with a stop at the big grocery store (open today) to get a few things for dinner. We are at that stage where we have to wind our supplies down since we leave Wednesday morning. We enjoyed a great scrambled egg, veggies, baguette  and rose wine dinner and got caught up on laundry before bed.