To Southern France by train

2026 will be my year of the train. And we’re kicking things off well, here in January!

Larissa has a work trip planned in Aubagne, Southern France.
And I, unbound from physical working locations, have joined!

I can feel that my choices do impact my life experiences indeed.
The smartphone is staying at home. The photos in this post are made with my 12 year old Nikon Coolpix. Traveling happens a tad slower (compared to flying, for example), a tad more conscious.
Compared to smartphone life and “traveling efficiently”, experiences are more profound and time feels different.

Chop chop, jumping from one thing to another all the time, doing what we need to do and then buggering off to the next thing, … Nah, I don’t need it anymore. There’s plenty of chaos in my head as it is.

For a lot less money than we expected, and a lot easier and faster than we expected, we found ourselves in Southern France on just 1 brief day of travel. Ghent → Kortrijk → Lille → Marseille → Cassis.

The significant portion of the trip, Lille to Marseille, only took 4.5 hours! While by car, that would’ve been about 10 hours of straight driving!

We arrived smoothly in the city of Cassis, a cute little harbor village.
It reminded us a bit of the Turkish atmosphere of the Mediterranean Sea.
Little boats, little restaurants, little tourists, the whole thing.

Even though a lot of little businesses are closed because we’re “out of season”, you can still easily spend lots in overly cute little boutiques.

There are beautiful walks to be experienced here, passing the “calanques”, the natural crevices of sea into the land.
Even though we’re out of season, there were plenty of people on the trail.
It was a single trail, back and forth on the same path, so we did meet quite some people.
But what a difference with the grey, cold air and snow that we left behind!

Meanwhile, the rest of Larissa’s team has arrived in La Ciotat. They’re all staying here in the same hotel.
The site itself is in Aubagne, and there Larissa will spend some busy busy days, filled with meetings and restaurant visits with her colleagues. Isn’t it nice? After all that remote working, to finally meet your colleagues again?

I’m not that fond of this trend where companies go uber international and then fly everyone over 3 times a year… But I guess it is what it is. As long as it’s cheaper and eternally rising profits remain the goal, things will stay as they are.
I’m already very content to have traveled here by train.
A taste of my further nomadic existence later this year, where I’ll be traveling to Türkiye by train!

On Saturday, Larissa returns back to Belgium, and I’ll stay here for another week.
À bientôt!