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Provence Logistics Question

Posted by (Ohio) on

We will be staying in the Provence area for 4 nights in mid September before heading to Nice. We will have a car. I am considering staying in St Remy since it seems to be central to a lot of the sights that we want to see. The one glitch is that we would really like to go to Cassis and do a boat ride to see the calanques. So I am debating on doing one of these options:

  1. 3 nights in St Remy and then moving to Cassis for one night before heading to Nice. Issue here is that most places don't allow check in until late afternoon and I really don't want to have to worry about keeping luggage in the car.

  2. St Remy for all 4 nights and doing a day trip to Cassis one of those days.

  3. 2 nights in St Remy and 2 nights somewhere else a little closer to Cassis.

I just wanted to get some thoughts and opinions. Thanks in advance.

Posted by
225 posts

Hope you have good weather! During our boat ride through the Calanques, the weather was a little rough, and people were throwing up all around me!

Posted by
28096 posts

Most hotels will gladly allow you to leave your luggage when you arrive in the morning so you can sightsee up until check-in time. Availability of that service would be critical to your Option 1, so it should be checked (via email) before committing to a one-night stay in Cassis.

For Option 3, you might consider staying in Aix-en-Provence. It will make your drive to your next hotel in Nice about 20 minutes shorter than driving Cassis-Nice (according to ViaMichelin.com).

Via Michelin estimates the St.-Remy - Cassis drive at about 1-1/2 hours one-way.

Note: I have not ever driven in Europe, so there may be gotchas here that I'm not thinking of.

Posted by
15 posts

Good point on the rough boat ride. Option 1 requires a commitment to stay in Cassis ( I like to have everything prebooked) and if the weather is bad then we'll have to find something else to do.

Posted by
1230 posts

Without knowing more about you, you can hike! The hike is wonderful. So if weather goes choppy, you can still access the Calanques. Alternately, we rented an outboard motor-boat, which may go some way in mitigating the chop (you can control the speed and even route to minimize it). Half our party chose to hike to En Vou and meet the other half of our party there (me and daughter hiked, and met hubby and other kids). Then we all took the boat back. We loved Cassis

Posted by
255 posts

Stay in St.Remy. That way you can pick which day u wanan do ur boat ride. Plus its not far.

Posted by
3050 posts

I'm a big fan of Cassis but I haven't been to St. Remy. I wouldn't worry too much about luggage in a car in Cassis, but regardless as others have noted you could probably stow it in your hotel before check-in time.

The downside is moving hotels always takes time away from your trip.

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