Marseille: The Only City Without Rain

What a weekend!  It started on Friday (because I have no class on Friday).  I had lunch with my friend Cassandre (she's a student hired by the program to run activities for us, but she invited me to her apartment for lunch).  Really simple pasta but the sauce was good - it was a small can of tomato paste and "crême frais" which I can sort of describe as cream cheese.

Then, because I didn't enough of mountains last weekend, I went rock climbing!  Fun, but a little scary.  Not the biggest fan of heights.  But I did make it to the top.

 

But the best part of the weekend was Marseille!  Apparently, it rained everywhere in France... Except Marseille!  It was the nicest weather I think I've ever seen in my life.  And this is considered "Winter"!!

(Click on any of the pictures to see them full sized)

We took the train in (a TGV... Train Grande Vitesse = Very Fast Train) into Marseille and it only took about an hour and a half.  It took us a little time to get oriented because Rick Steves didn't have any info on Marseille in his travel book (shame on you, Rick!).  But we found a map at the train station and found our way to the tourist office.  After we figured out what we were doing for the day, we had an excellent crêpe lunch.  Delicious!

Then we went to Château D'If.  Oh my god, was it AMAZING!  First, a little back story on the place:  Château D'If was a fortess and then prison in the 1500's.  It is the setting of the novel, The Count of Monte Cristo (which, Carl gave me for Christmas and I regret to say I didn't get to finish yet.  It's on my to do list).

As for the fortress, it was so cool!  The only way to get there is by boat, which was 10 euros, but the fortress itself is free for students (if you have a European school ID... which I do!  It also got us into Carcassonne for free!).  The fortress was so cool - all the stones are bleached white from the sun, which was so warm.  And even though it's on an island, it wasn't windy at all!  I wish we could have brought a picnic because there were some great sunny and grassy spots around the fortress.

Inside the fortress was fun too.  Lots of old prison cells to explore and you could go up to the roof/ramparts and see all of Marseille!  The boats, the ocean, the sun - it was beautiful!

We only stayed for an hour and a half (though I would have loved to have brought a book and a snack and sat there all day) because we had to get the boat back to shore.  After Château D'If, we went up to the big church, Notre Dame de Garde (it's so big and high up that we could see it on the boat ride).

Notre Dame was so pretty!  And the hill was so high up!  I'm glad we took the bus because the hill is apparently 147.85 meters high (around 485.5 feet) and we could see EVERYTHING from up there!  The church was also really tall: the tower is 33.8 meters (111 feet) and the statue at the top is 9.72 meters (32 feet).  Yeah... the statue weighs 9,796 kg (21, 596 pounds).  How they got it up there, I can only guess.

On the outside, the church was black and white stones and inside the roof was domed and covered in gold.  The walls (when they weren't covered in gold) had tons of framed pictures of boats!  It was a nautical themed church!  And the arches were made of red and white stones.  The place looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book!  (I wish we could have wandered around the basilica more, but there was mass going on).

 

After the church it was already time to go back to the train station and on the way, we passed a marching band!

It was such an amazing day!  I wish we could have spent more time wandering the city itself because Marseille is HUGE!  I would have loved to get a café at the harbor or done some shopping or visited some of the other historic sights.  Well, I might just have to go back :)


Stay Tuned For: Winter Break... Donde esta el banyo?

Click on the picture to see more pics from Marseille: