It was in the low 70’s when we left this morning, shortly after eight.  Started off along the coast, but within a half an hour we began climbing, as did the temperature.  It hit 85 before 9 am;

and with the sun directly in our face we were dripping. This was to be our longest and highest climb for the day; thank goodness as it took us an hour and a half to bike up the ten milesleaving the coast behind and stopping to rest/breath and take pictures along the way.The view at the top was far reaching and and the air cooler, but all the tall trees were gone and low shrub remained.  The fly down was fabulous, as there was a generous shoulder and we could see grape vines on the next mountain. We spent little time at the bottom, as our second climb began almost immediately.  No shoulder, but shade….the trade off was worth it.  And the scenery spectacular as we weaved our way up and around the mountaincatching glimpses of pretty coves along the way. At the top of the second climb, we lost our traffic to the interstate, so we had the downhill to ourselves along with other bikers out for a strenuous ride.  We had a long stretch of towns to go through before our last and lowest climb of the day and the scenery was just as fabulous.Our last stretch was through small townsand beautiful harbors,our favorite was Sanary sur Mer, both harbor

and beach were inviting.But we had already made a reservation a few miles down the road, so we continued.  The city of Toulon is a cruise ship stop and home to the French navy, this is the marine museum. An interesting town with the required town square,beautiful fountainsand statues and a very active harbor with a line of restaurants that makes you want to stay a week; somehow, we missed a picture, but got the dinner of salad with smoked salmon and steak with Roquefort sauce.  Think we are actually taking the day off tomorrow, so we will fill you in on more pictures then.