Chateau d'If and Frioul

Today was the last full day of our holiday. We had a fairly early start and got a boat from the old port to the Chateau d’If, only about a 20 minute trip.   It’s a castle on a rock just off the Marseilles coast that has a fascinating history and offers some great views of the City and of the Frioul islands. There was a useful audioguide for the castle that also synchronised with some of the films showing about the castle.

Once we’d fully explored the castle we got another boat to Frioul.  This is an archipelago consisting of two main islands, Rattoneau and Pomegues (it also includes If and Tiboulain). We did a lot of walking around beautiful paths and saw some good views of the area. There was a fantastic display of aeroplanes too, which were apparently practising for a show on Saturday. They are the Patrouille de France, similar to the UK’s red arrows.

We got a boat back to the mainland around 5.30pm and enjoyed a quick drink before choosing our final evening’s dining venue.  On the advice of TripAdvisor we settled on going to a place called La Table a Deniz.  We enjoyed some really excellent food with me having a veal stew and Gordon enjoying rabbit stuffed with tapenade.

We had a few drinks at our favourite bar. Polikarpov, afterwards to mark the end of the holiday.