Ile Sainte Marguerite

Tuesday we headed to Ile Sainte Marguerite, which you may know of because of "The Man in the Iron Mask," it's the island where the prison was. We took a ferry to the island which is just off the coast of Cannes in the Mediterranean. The boat ride was a lot of fun and fairly short.



We only had about three hours on the island, so we basically headed directly to the fortress to check it out. It was definitely one of my favorite things I've done so far. Seeing the other old cities (Eze and Saint Paul de Vence, which you'll see soon) was fun, but fairly repetitive. The fortress was so much more fun because it was basically just us in the whole area and we were able to get on some of the walls of the fortress and climb around. That kind of hands-on physical exploring is by far my favorite.





I thought originally that the fortress was from the dark ages, but it turns out that it was actually from about the 4th century B.C. which is way cool to see, and climb all over. We went into the actual museum, which is of the prison and you also get to walk around part of a Roman cistern.




We spent the rest of our time hanging out by the dock. There was something relaxing about sitting watching the flow of the sea and seeing a seagull (or maybe an albatross) fight to fly into the headwind. The ride back on the ferry was just as fun. I haven't been on a boat for a long time and besides the fortress, I really liked being out on the water.