Bienvenue au paradis

This is the last blog, but with pictures added.

Well now, it’s pretty hard to top the events of Paris and Heather’s blog.  The next few days were pretty uneventful, but exactly what we needed.  Heather left off where we boarded our train that was actually going somewhere instead of sitting in a train station all night.  It was a high speed train going 300km/h, which was just fast enough for how we wanted to leave Paris!  I finished my last blog on the train and then my sleepy side overcame me and I dozed off for most of the trip.  When I woke up, Heather had told me all about how beautiful the countryside was.  We travelled through Avignon, which will make sense to those of you who know the song “Sur le Pont d’Avignon”.  She didn’t get to see the bridge, but I think that will be on our list for our next Europe trip ;)

We arrived in Marseille to the welcoming sight of sun.  We had both felt trapped inside a rain cloud with no sun for the last two weeks.  Walking from the platform into the train station with the sun and smell of salt water instantly made us happy and relieved to be starting a new adventure.  I had been to Marseille five years ago on my Europe trip with Stacy and so I remembered a lot of where things were and how to get places.  Instead of taking the bus or metro to our apartment, I wanted to walk through the city and show see the things I remember from my last trip.  We eventually made it to the apartment after a 45min plus walk with our packs (maybe could have planned that better).  Upon arriving at the apartment, we realize that the only directions we had from the landlord is how to get to the building, but not which apartment was the one we would be staying in.  We borrowed the phone of the guy fixing the intercom for the building and got a hold of the landlord.  When she arrived, to our dismay, we had to walk to the very top of the building, 98 steps in total (we counted!).   When she opened the door we had instant smiles on our faces.  It was a cute little studio with a great layout and a separate bathroom.  Yup, not cooking from the toilet in this apartment!  The fridge was even human size!  We were very excited and celebrated by having a nice nap on a human sized bed.

Even though it was only about noon, it felt like midnight because of our past night’s escapade.  We figured we had better make the best of the day and go explore.  We headed right for the coast and found a cute little sandy beach and Heather instantly fell in love with Marseille.  The sunshine, the coastal breeze, the water, the sand . . . pretty much a paradise for my girl!  We had a little lunch on the dock as we watched kids play in the water.  We took a walk along the water and I tried to convince Heather that it really wasn’t that cold.  She wasn’t so convinced saying that I couldn’t feel the cold because my feet were numb.  In the next day or so I would eventually convince her to go in the water.

From the beach we took a long walk up the coast along the road, checking out the restaurants and little stores in between staring at the sea.  After that, we walked all the way back to the old port where there were literally over a thousand sailboats all sandwiched into the harbor.  We wandered in and around the cobblestone streets as we window shopped for sunglasses and earrings for Heather.  At this point we were both pretty tired and sore of walking, so we bought our metro/bus tickets for our time here and headed back to the apartment.  We hadn’t eaten anything for supper yet, so we left again to find a restaurant.  At this point it was nearly 9pm and all the restaurants were either closed, closing, or only serving drinks.  That’s one thing that still bugs me about France, the fact that they only eat between 7 and 9 and if you miss those hours, too bad for you.  As much as the food is so much better over here, I sure do appreciate the convenience of service back home.  Anytime you go into a restaurant back home that is open, you will be served food (and not have to wait 20 minutes for the bill).  The restaurants will also be open early until late, instead of a narrow window like here. 

That being said, we resorted to buying some groceries and cooking a meal.  We went to the casino.  Yup, they have a grocery store called Casino.  We decided on Gnocchi in a cream sauce with lamb chops and asparagus.  On the side we had ciabatta bread with camembert cheese, and for dessert we had religious chocolate. haha  I guess that’s what they call large cream puffs here.  We were hurried out of the grocery store, because even they close at 9.  You would think in a city of almost a million people and the second largest city in France that they would stay open later than 9 . . . guess that’s not the French way.  We picked up what we hadn’t been able to get there at a little corner store by our place and then headed back to cook up some delicious food. 

We haven’t cooked with lamb very much, but over here it is cheaper than beef (and tastier in our opinion).  Our meal came out tasting so good thanks to Heather and her sauce making skills.  However, the asparagus were cut exceptionally well and boiled by yours truly!  We had enough food for a second meal, so the leftovers would become our supper the following night.

The next morning our plan was to head out to Le Chateau d’If.  I thought I would include a picture of my attire, because it will shock those who know how fond I am of socks . . .

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this place, it is the prison that housed Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo.  It is also the prison that held the real life Man in the Iron Mask from whom the inspiration for the movie is derived.  The castle was actually originally built as a fortress to protect Marseille from invaders in the 16^th century.  It was later converted to a prison and last used to hold German soldiers prisoners during the first world war.  Since then it has been a tourist attraction.  We took a boat out to the island of only 3 hectares.  You are pretty much allowed anywhere in the castle and island, we took full advantage.  We visited all the little rooms and prison cells, read the history, took in the view from the top of the towers, walked around the grounds . . . It was really neat. 

A view from our boat sailing out of the harbor

Our boat as it drops us off and loads up to head back to shore

Us with the Mediterranean and Marseille in the background

Heather on the bridge to the castle.  The castle has only one entrance . . .

Heather sneaking from one cell to the next, just like Edmond Dantes

Me being married . . . I mean being captive in Chateau d'If

View of If from the top of the castle

Look, they already have Heather's old initials in the wall

Ain't she a cutee!!

Europe sure does love their spiral stairs

Chateau d'If with us in the distance

Chateau d'If from our boat

As we were sailing back to land we could see a very angry cloud heading right for us, so we decided that heading to the beach might not be the most enjoyable thing.  We did a little bit more walking through the streets before heading back to the apartment.  We stopped at a hot dog vendor and had two pretty good hot dogs with “crispies”, what we came to find out were deep fried onions.  Still not anywhere near a Costco hot dog from Canada, but by European standards not bad.  The rest of our night was filled up with Skype, eating leftovers, watching funny videos on YouTube, and watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  It was a good movie but very slow moving.

So that’s the end of my post.  I’m so glad to see so many people commenting and enjoying the blogs.  We really are having a great time here and can’t wait for our next adventure . . .