Angie and her kids were here from Friday night to Monday midday. Sylvain taught them to play pétanque, which they loved.
Saturday afternoon, we ventured out to drive the Route des Crêtes which goes along the bluffs between La Ciotat and Cassis. Sylvain also drove us past his high school. Along the scenic road, we stopped at three lookout points to admire the view.
I don't much like narrow sinuous roads with no shoulders or guard rails and steep drop offs, but there was no wind or rain, so I sucked it up for my guests and just took it slow. On the way home, we stopped in Aubagne so they could do a bit of souvenir shopping. Then we sat at a café on the main square and had ice cream. There was some kind of modern dance performance going on, which had drawn a small crowd. That finished, a DJ took over and people were dancing. Nobody from our group felt like joining in, though.
Back home, Angie, Riley and I went on an hour-long walk before a late dinner. The air was uncharacteristically humid, which made it unpleasantly hot and muggy, even for me! After a late dinner of pizza and leftovers, we started watching the movie Eurovision with Will Ferrell, recommended by Angie's crew. We only got about halfway through, however, before eyes started drooping, so we turned it off and headed to bed.
Sunday late morning, after Sylvain had opened his Father's Day gifts, we went to the food market in Aubagne to get food for the day. There was a parade going by. We stopped and watched two trampoline artists for a few minutes. We got a handful of different cheeses, watermelon, peaches and nectarines, strawberries, three kinds of salami, a tomato basil garlic spread, a serving of paëlla, a big round loaf of bread, a red paper and a large tomato. On the way home, we stopped off at the Levetti bakery in Napollon for a variety of different cakes for dessert. We ate part of our fare for lunch at home (but all of the huge box of cakes!) and saved the rest for an evening picnic at the beach.
We left the house around 5:30pm, passing several kilometers of back up traffic on the other side of the freeway with people returning from the beach, and arriving at our go-to rocky beach in La Ciotat just about 6pm. There were two parking places just across the street. The four girls and Sylvain swam. We picnicked. It was nice and warm, both the air and the water, but slightly overcast, so no longer extremely hot.
We left to head home about 7:45 so our girls could get washed up and ready for bed on time as Monday was a school day for both.
On the drive to the beach, Laureva and I told Angie what we'd learned about La Posidonie on our recent field trip. Later at the beach, Laureva found some pieces of stems and leaves, as well as some pelottes, to show Angie.
Sylvain and the girls had school Monday. I drove Angie and the kids to the train station in Marseille for their 12:12pm TGV and then headed up to Aix for an afternoon meeting.
We had a lovely weekend. I hadn't seen Angie in person since 2008! But it was just like old times (except for the five kids we've had between us since our time hanging out in the 1990s). The kids got along great and it was hard for the girls to say goodbye. We're looking forward to seeing them again in Juneau in 2025. They brought me three jars of their own smoked sockeye salmon which I'm going to savor and ration to make last as long as possible.
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