Marvelous Marseille!

Just got back from another wonderful weekend in France! This time we ventured to my first non-Parisien city - Marseille. I'm thrilled that we did this; I really wanted a taste of France separate from the one that the #1 tourist city in the world gave me. Although Paris is AMAZING I wanted a more authentic experience as well. 

When I began planning our activities for this trip, I immediately became daunted by what I saw online about Marseille. Even Rick Steves himself said that Marseille "challenges you to find it's charm" and I read somewhere else online that the central train station in Marseille is "the scariest place on this earth." Intimidated, I nervously planned our activities for the weekend. I decided we should avoid being out after dark and made little day activities for us and thought we could do a day trip to Provence as well, especially if Marseille was a little too rough around the edges for us. I soon saw that I had nothing to be nervous about! Let's start at the beginning of our journey...

Alex scheduled a night train for us. This was incredibly time efficient because now that we don't have Friday classes, we could take the train on Thursday and wake up in Marseille on Friday morning. The way the return tickets worked out, this gave us all of Friday, all of Saturday, and an early trip back to Luxembourg on Sunday with one change, which would bring us to arrive at about 2PM. I wasn't too keen on the idea of night trains...I'd heard less-than-fond reviews of them from other students who had used them in previous semesters, and I was concerned about safety and security of our belongings. Alex, on the other hand, had great memories of having gone on a night train with his family and loves the concept. 

Now, I'm thrilled that I got this experience! I'm not sure night trains are my favorite, but I'm so glad we got to do one of these while we're here this semester. It was cool.

We boarded at 7:30PM and dumped our stuff in our compartment. We were the only ones, and our compartment-mates were evidently going to join us later. The compartments are very cramped, so people typically stand in the narrow passageway and watch the view until they are ready for bed. Alex demonstrates below: 

After dark, we retreated to our room. There's no standing space in there, so we just crawled up to bed! I cracked out a new book that my host-mom recommended. It's about an ex-CIA woman named Kate whose family moves to Luxembourg. The author lived here for awhile and makes all sorts of references to familiar things - the Gare Centrale, the ubiquitous H&Ms in Europe, shopping at Cactus, train stops in Thionville, etc. I highly recommend this book! I finished it on the train back this morning, it was great.

At Metz, we picked up our suite-mates. As it turned out, they were probably the best roommates we could have! It was 2 boys and a girl together, about our age and American, and they were students studying abroad in Metz. They all went to Georgia Tech (shoutout to my Georgia readers :) and were friendly and not weird at all! It was definitely a pleasant and relieving surprise and Alex and I knew we wouldn't have to sleep with our backpacks locked to our legs or something like that. Phew!

It wasn't the best sleep of my life but it was cool to wake up in Marseille that morning! At about 6:15 we arrived, and took a Metro a couple stops down to where our hostel was located (in the center of Marseille). It was dark and cold and rainy, and we couldn't see much yet, but we made our way to our hostel and left our backpacks in storage. After vegetating for few minutes, we finally made our way out into the drizzle to find some nourishment. We found a little coffee shop where I had an espresso and Alex had his classic! A Nutella banane crêpe. 

Our first official activity of the day was to take the ferry out to the islands to see the Chateau d'If. This Chateau had once been a lookout point of protection for the old port of Marseille, and then turned into a prison. It's exactly the same idea as Alcatraz in San Francisco (and even looks pretty much the same from afar). The tourist boat takes you out, leaves you there, and lets you explore and then retrieves you again after about an hour. The boat cost us €10,10 but we got into the Chateau part for free (again because of our citizenship - sweet!). 

On the way over we saw ROWERS! I was wondering how they were managing out in the rough waves and when we got closer I saw that they have special boats with really wide gunwales. They almost look more like kayaks. I thought this was so cool! Yet another occasion here in Europe when I've wanted to dive in and swim to the boats to join practice. 

Here's Chateau d'If! It's all limestone and is really a cool color (I dressed to match!).

I like this sailboat. Looks like a pirate ship!

There's a ferris wheel right outside of the metro station! Kind of random.

Even though it was still grey, we took a bus up to the beach to experience the light blue Mediterranean waters up close. It was the most beautiful water!

Also right at the beach was this giant (and apparently well-known) imitation of Michelangelo's David, which we are going to see in Florence. Note: palm trees! 

After beaching, we decided to make the long journey back by renting bikes. We'd just signed up for a week of bike rental in Luxembourg - a Euro each for a week. Other than that euro, it was free every 30 minutes. So you could go as far as you wanted as long as you plugged your bike in and got a new one every half hour! Since the bus fare had €1,50 this was actually much more economic (and fun)! We could even ride them Saturday, too (and we did, briefly). I was really happy to get to rent these bikes, because it felt like a full circle. We'd often learned about them in our high school French class and now got to actually participate in this cultural experience!

I'm not sure I ever got used to how heavy those bikes were though...maybe need to practice more on the ones here in Luxembourg!

We went into an Italian restaurant for dinner that first night...and got seated with a super cool view over the marina! We watched the sun set and the ferris wheel lit up when it got dark. I could see rowers launching and coming in throughout our entire meal! I watched over Alex's shoulder all evening!

We decided to start Saturday like we'd started Friday - at the café! We walked in and sit down and the owner just walked by us and said as he passed "Un café et une crêpe nutella banane?" One day there and we were already regulars! He brought it right over and even brought the glass of water as well. Made me smile :) 

Next stop was the street markets. Before coming to Europe, when I thought of France I always pictured getting fruits and vegetables from giant street Farmer's Markets. It just seemed so...French! I don't know how that image of France originally got into my mind but I'm thrilled that we ended up finding these markets to experience. They had everything from antiques to fish to clothing to books to pizzas...and of course lots of organic fruits and veggies. 

The weather was beautiful! It was in the low 70s and sunny ALL day. 

A lavender macaroon. It was delicious and a classic Marseille/Provence-themed treat!

So many strawberries at the fresh fruits/veggies market!

After the markets, we decided to eat sandwiches on the beach. We made our way up there past the marina, and ended up staying at the beach (after putting on lots of sunscreen!) for hours! We pretty much made a day of it.

To me, the sight of many masts is one of the prettiest sights in the world :)

On the way there, we found the entrance to the boathouse. I could see all the rowers washing their boats and really wanted to run down and join!

I think this is the bluest water I've ever seen. 

At the beach, people watched the sailboats, lay out tanning, and played volleyball (we watched a couple matches, the recreational volleyball players are really good here). Many people were swimming, especially kids. We saw 2 people with wetsuits but there were recreational swimmers with just a Speedo! We were surprised it wasn't freezing and eventually went down and stuck our toes in and it was COLD! These people are tough stuff for playing/swimming in that water! For now I'll stick to land (or boats :)

He likes playing in the sand :)

I'm having the same "is this real?" feeling as when I look at my pictures from Interlaken!

Our view from our restaurant on the second night. Amazing.

When I walked in the door this afternoon, I had the rare run-in with my host mom. We had a nice conversation and she agreed that Marseille is a good place to go to see "real" French people. She thinks it was good for me. I agree, and I don't think I would've had as good of an experience if I'd gone here after having gone to somewhere a little more classic South of France-y like Cannes or Nice or even Provence or Monaco (not France but very close!). I'm happy to announce that Marseille - as unique as it is - turned into one of my favorite trips so far. I loved how authentic and non-touristy it was and as much as I love Paris, I love this too.

This was my final trip to France for the semester and I am very nostalgic about that but also so proud of how it went. In mere months here, Alex and I have increased to a proficient level of fluency after 8 years of study. We both agree that now we're at the point where we can understand everything that's said (with few exceptions), and our only weakness sometimes lies in communicating back - just because we don't know all of the vocabulary or can't summon it quickly enough. (Our listening is particularly strong from hearing it everywhere; on the train, in the metro, on the streets, from our French professor, from my host mom, etc.) However, I think we both feel that we could get by in France at this point. People understand us perfectly well and we have normal human interactions and conversations in French. I think this is so great - and it just makes me want to do more to better my language abilities and not to lose the progress I've made. It makes me grateful not only that I stuck with it, but also that I had such an amazing French program to guide me through my early years in middle school when I began, and particularly in high school. 

Then my host mom offered me some tomato sauce! She said I could put it on my rice pasta or just eat it. I opted to save it for dinner and do the latter - it's so thick it's like a stew, with a giant yummy carrot right in the middle! Lucky me!

Well, I'm almost literally in a state of shock when I realize that it's time to start getting ready for Poland and to finalize our Italy plans this week. We head on our second and final study tour with our class on Friday, and will be going all together to see Cracow, Poland, with a featured visit to Auschwitz. I feel lucky to have a trip like this orchestrated by my professor and the assistant dead - this is something I am definitely interested in seeing but would be intimidated to plan on my own. I know that it'll be a difficult yet very informative and interesting trip and I do look forward to it!

That'll be next Friday-Wednesday and then we go off on our own and arrive in Rome on Wednesday evening where we'll do our own thing (a much "lighter" trip than Cracow!) - 2 days in Rome, 2 days Florence, and then back home! I can't believe that this spring trip is already nearly upon us!