Toulon

I spent the past four days in Toulon with my cousin Natalie! She's been living there for four years teaching English to French grade-schoolers, and the fact that I never visited her during my three months in Paris has been a regret for two years. This time I'm glad I finally made it to the south of France, because I had a wonderful time! 


I’m not sure how to describe Toulon. It’s smaller than Paris, of course, but it’s still a very large city. It's on the water, but there are mountains, too! There are no subways, but the buses are wonderful, but that’s probably because I was riding with Natalie and she is an expert at riding the buses. I never even had to look at a schedule or a map. Natalie spent four days showing me around, and it was awesome! It was so relaxing to not have to plan where to go, and I never got bored, because Natalie has lived there for four years and so she knows all the fun things to do. To all of my loyal readers who are Mishlers: go visit Natalie in Toulon! It’s awesome! Plus, I got to meet Natalie’s husband Pierre, and he’s really cool. He drove us around so we could see the water and told us about the navy boats in the harbor. We spent time hanging out with Natalie and Pierre’s friends and it was so fun. My French is incredibly choppy, but I was able to understand quite a bit, and Natalie translated when I needed it. (Natalie’s French is amazing! I’m so jealous. She sounds so natural, and she knows all the idioms and colloquialisms. At my best I sound like a textbook, and most of the time I sound like a broken record or a child. She sounds like a real person!) It was a side of traveling that I never get to do. I see the cities, but I never get to meet the people, so this was really cool! (plus I got badly-needed French practice)


The evening I arrived we went to a friend’s house in the country. It’s such a cool location that the family has one house that they rent as a holiday destination, and they live in the other house. We sat there in the perfect weather, eating appetizers and sipping wine and speaking French! So cool! (I didn’t take any photos because I really didn’t want to be annoying after Natalie’s friends were so welcoming) 
The next day we visited another friend who lives at a vineyard. She showed us around and showed us the tiny buds that will be grapes, and then we saw the cellar and the grape press and then we got to taste the wine! Afterwards Pierre drove us up the mountain so we could look down at the harbor of Toulon and see all the ships there. There are quite a few ships since there is a naval base in Toulon.  

Natalie took me to the base of a mountain, and we took a telepherique (gondola) to the top. It was awesome! It was not quite scary, but it certainly made my stomach queasy to look down. The gondola goes really fast, it’s just a tiny box on a string, and if you move around, it sways, which makes it feel like a real adventure. We had a picnic lunch sitting on top of the mountain. (I checked my shoelaces and then hung my feet off the edge of a small cliff) I wish we had mountains in Ohio!

One day, Natalie and I went to the beach and ate gelato with our toes in the sand. It really doesn’t get much better than that.

Another day we went to the market and bought olives and strawberries and bread and sat on a different beach. The beaches here are very windy, which would be bad in the winter, but the weather was perfect, so the wind felt nice on my (slightly sunburned) skin. 

This statue is right outside city hall. Since French marriages have to take place at city hall, this butt appears in a lot of wedding pictures, including many of Natalie's. 

Hanging out with Natalie for four days was a really fun way to spend the last four days of what has been an absolutely amazing four months! I'm home now, and this is the end of the adventure, folks. You’ll have to find new ways of entertaining yourselves (I hear Downton Abbey is good) now that you can’t read my blog. Ciao!