Help with Cassis and Marseille logistics please!
 

I did a search but found little info and most of it was not recent information so I am hoping someone can help.

We have a house rented in St Remy for 5/21 to 5/28. We fly in and out of Marseille on 5/19 and 5/29. We want to spend the first 2 nights in Cassis. The hotels we are considering are Les Roches Blanches and Hotel Mahogany, or maybe Royal Cottage.

We emailed 4 hotels requesting rate and availabiilty info. From viewing their web sites, we thought we would like to stay at Hotel Mahogany, but there seems to be a problem with their web site and they have never responded to either of my 2 email inquiries to [email protected]. So I am beginning to wonder about them. On their web site - http://www.hotelmahogany.com/ - the English version does not work. On the French version, when you click reserve on-line, you are taken to another site that basically says this site is shut down and advises you to contact the hotel directly regarding a reservation.

Has anyone stayed there? What can you tell me? Their web site says it was renovated in 2003.

Orginally we thought we would rent a car for our entire stay, but unfortunately we need to rent an automatic and the quote from auto europe is so expensive. Any suggestions on other places to try for a automatic transmission rental car?

Somewhere I read that you do not need a car in Cassis. In fact parking it can be a problem? How far are Hotel Mahogany and Hotel les Roches Blanches from the harbor and town? Is it walking distance? I believe Mahogany is on Bestouan beach.

We are now considering not renting a car for while in Cassis. If we did not, what would be the best way to get to Cassis and our hotel from the Marseille airport?

Finally, what hotel in Marseille could you recommend for our last night before flying out early the next morning?

I can't help you with Cassis. We have an early morning flight out of Marseille in the fall. We have booked the Best Western at the airport, [email protected]. A double room is 89 Euros and their shuttle to the airport starts running at 5 am.

Cars with automatic transmission are going to be expensive no matter which agency you use, and AutoEurope usually has some of the lowest rates.

I checked AutoEurope and for a Renault Laguna the 7-day rate is $630 ($90/day!), 9-day $704, 10-day $782. That means for the 9-day you would pay an extra $37/day, but for the 10-day you are paying an extra $51/day. Go figure.

Maybe it would pay to rent for 9 days, the best deal. You would just have to return the car on the 28th at the same time you picked it up on the 21st.

(There is currently a 15% discount, plus it was "discount of the day" whatever that means.)

I was quoting the Basic Rate, which includes the VAT, but not CDW, which most credit cards cover (check yours).

I don't think Autoeurope rates for AT cars are terribly expensive, it depends what you expect. I have just been getting quotes myself, and they are around $75 day for a compact or economy car with AT and AC. Now at first I thought that was really a lot because I had rented the same thing from them a couple of years ago in that area (Provence) for only about $45 a day. Of course then I realized that the value of the USD has dropped by about 25-33 pct in that time frame, also, so it's not really as big an increase as I was thinking, although still a hike comparatively. Autoeurope's rates are pretty good. YOu can check around, but I didn't find any cheaper (eg, Argus rental).

Basically, you pay about $20 a day extra for an AT compared to manual, in the compact/economy category, or $140 a week. Basic manual car rentals aren't as cheap as you might expect this year in that area. The manual compact Renault Megane is around $335 a week from them in Marseille, and those rates are without any insurance.

I got rates a lot lower than Sue, maybe the time period -- I checked my dates of stay (6/27-7/4) for pickup and return in Marseille and they show the cheapest AT starting at $439 a week (which is a Citroen compact convertible, how cool) and the cheapest manual at $300 a week. Perhaps Sue was looking at much larger cars.

Hi! A friend of mine stayed at the Mahogany a few years ago and just loved it -- especially having a balcony overlooking the harbor. It's very close to the harbor and town, which seems quite walkable. So my husband and I are staying there in May for two nights. I didn't have any trouble making the reservation, so maybe there's just a temporary glitch. Good luck!

Hi Everyone - thanks for your suggestions. Here is where we are now. I broke down and called Mahogany today. I found out that their email system has been down for a week and they told me it is back up as of today. However, we were not able to snag any balcony rooms with a ocean view. We booked there any way - 2 rooms with garden view on the back side of the hotel. They still have that gorgeous terrace with an oceanview for all guests to use. They have a large group booked the days we need rooms. I emailed them and am waitng for their email confirmation back.

With that resolved, I am now focusing on the rental car, dealing with the logistics of getting 5 people from the Marseille airport to the Hotel Mahogany in a rental car that won't hold 5 of us and luggage (Mercedes class A). We will only have this situation for a couple of days 5/19 - 5/21 when two others arrive and they will have an additional car. We looked into renting a larger car for 2 days and then changing back to the smaller Mercedes for 3 of us for the week, but were told by auto europe there is a 3 day minimum rental required. :-(

We are trying to decide whether or not to get a car until 5/21 when we take off for St Remy for the week. I understand Hertz has 5 rental places in Marseille - airport, rail station, and 3 downtown and 1 location in La Ciotat - about 4.17 miles from Cassis. How hard would it be to get the 5 of us to Hotel Mahohagany without a car since we would not need one while in Cassis? And then 3 of us would need to get to one of the Hertz rental offices on 5/21 and the other 2 would need to get back to the Marseille airport to meet the other 2 friends flying in? The devil is in the details, isn't it?

So rent the larger car at the airport for three days, turn it in in Avignon on the 22nd for a smaller one for the next week.

We stayed at the Mahogany in September for couple of nights. We too were taken in by the photos on the website. We had one of the big twin rooms with a large terrace facing the sea.

The hotel’s only redeeming feature, in my opinion, was our terrace. The rooms are really, really basic, and the service is pretty much non-existant. The hotel is really overpriced for what it is.

The hotel is across the street from a small beach, and there is a good restaurant next door.
There is big parking lot next to the restaurant.

We didn’t consider that the hotel was within walking distance of town. If you don’t mind
hiking up hill for a very long stretch, I guess you can walk. The hotel was pretty difficult to find as there are a great number of one way streets in the area that the hotel is in.

When we arrived at the hotel, there was no place to pull in and unload. The hotel is almost at the bottom of a hill around a sharp curve. In order to get to the front door and reception, you have to go up quite a large flight of stairs. When I went up to ask for help with our baggage, they looked at me as though no one had ever asked for help before and it took them about 15 minutes for them to find a young man that could help us.

I had been to Cassis two or three times before on day trips, and was looking forward to spending a few days there as it’s a really cute town, but parking the car in town was so difficult (and this was the end of September) that it was not really a pleasant experience. Don’t even try it on Market day (I think that was on Wednesday) but would have to look that up.

If I were doing it again, I would stay in town. I can’t imagine that the rooms at a better “in town” hotel could be any less appealing than the rooms at the Mahogany, despite the fact that it is classified higher than most of the other hotels.

oh, I didn't realize there were so many of you to need a large car. Well, they will be expensive no matter what.

It can't be that hard to get to Cassis from Marseille without a car--there are buses and a train station at Cassis. There must be public transportation (a shuttle or something) between the airport and Marseille proper. I'd find out about that and get to Marseille.

You can either take the train from Marseille St Charles station to Cassis, or try to find out about the bus and where it leaves from. The bus takes about an hour and costs around four euro.

YOu could even just take a cab from Marseille (at whatever point you can get from the airport by bus/shuttle) to Cassis, and it shouldn't cost that much--even two cabs from Marseille to Cassis wouldn't be outrageous as it isn't that far (maybe 15-20 km from central Marseille?).

Have you perused Cassis' web site which is very good and gives you all kind of transportation information, both from elsewhere via bus/train, and within the city? There are apparently two local bus lines that run within the city (called Marcouline) and they give you schedules on there. There is a lot of information on there.