Daily Archives: August 11, 2024

The Day Market, and the Night Market, of Cassis

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Various days between 06-July and 18-July



Cassis is, at the end of the day, a tourist town.

And, as befitting of a tourist town, it’s got lots of interesting shops to walk and wander and peruse through… but what if there could be MORE shops? Well, they thought of that – a few times a week during the day, and most evenings, there’s markets that take over areas of town!

These are pretty awesome, and pretty consistent in their wares – We saw the Day Markets at least twice, and the night markets almost every evening we were there, and I don’t think I can recall the vendors changing up at all during that time.




The day market was, by far, the bigger of the two; it took over a good portion of the center of town, and had vendors selling everything from cured meats, to fresh-pressed oils, to wooden kitchen supplies and jewelry… I even found a vendor selling Pokémon keychains!

The evening was far more sedate, but also far more frequent. Which, in my mind, equals out pretty well. There wasn’t any food on display, but there were some clothing vendors and quite a few jewelers displaying some quite beautiful options.

Unfortunately, I somehow missed out on taking photos of the night markets… so bear with me and use your imagination: The scene is a lovely French evening, out by the Mediterranean. It’s still warm from the day, but comfortably cool thanks to the light sea breeze. The street and sidewalks are white polished stone, almost slippery in how well worn they are from centuries of citizens. It’s dark, but the market is bright. You walk in.

A boat tour of Les Calanques

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Thursday, 11-July-2024



Cassis is, in no uncertain terms, a tourist town. It is also, however, a seaside town… in equally firm terms.

With that in mind, we took a sea-tour of Les Calanques, the French version of Fjords.


It started out early on a Thursday – as a general rule, I’ve avoided getting up early on this adventure… but the opportunity to do the big tour (all nine Calanques over nearly 3hrs) was far too awesome to pass up. Adding to the challenge, though, was the fact that we hadn’t been able to get tickets the previous day, and so the morning found us having a light snack and then quickly heading into town to queue up in line to pick up the tickets.

We weren’t alone in line, but thankfully it went quickly. A quick conversation in broken French and confused English, then a short walk to the boat, and then… we were casting off the lines, and setting off into the Park!



Sort of like hiking, there’s not too much for me to describe here… I mean, we ooohh’d and aahh’d, the captain made announcements in French, and we looked at our English translations. We saw gorgeous sea cliffs, amazing harbors and beaches, passed and were passed by countless other cool looking boats.

It was a glorious few hours, no doubt, made thankfully quite enjoyable by the anti-nausea medications that I’d taken earlier. We had some small snacks and drinks that we’d brought along, but for the most part just focused on the scenery. It was simply lovely, and I 100% recommend it for anyone who finds themselves in Cassis or Marseille.



Of kind of interesting note, there were a few cool posters up about and around the boat we were on… including two old photos of Cassis Harbor, and one very interesting one discussing an underwater cave that was discovered to house 27,000 year old paintings!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosquer_Cave