Marseille

Hi family

I am sorry that this blog post took so long to put up, my internet has not been cooperating with me.  Anyways at the end of April I took a trip to the south of France (Marseille) with a friend of mine (Nick) for a little R&R plus I had never been to France before so I figured that this would be an excellent opportunity.

So we left on Thursday morning early (we had to be up and at the train station by 5:45) so we could get to the airport on time.  Of course the trip to Eindhoven (where the airport is) was anything but smooth as the train was running late and I was nearly having a heart attack (If we missed this flight it would have been the second flight that I had missed with Ryanair) but fortunately everything worked out and we got to the airport, on the plane and took off on time.  The flight was about 1 1/2 hours long with nothing really unusual and then we landed in the south of France.  We quickly discovered that the french are not the most helpful people on the face of the earth as we bought train tickets but yet there was no train station for at least 10 km so ended up having to spend more money and time to take a bus into Marseille. After arriving in the city I must say that I was underwhelmed as the area that we were walking though looked pretty run down but we quickly found our way to the Old Port (the most touristic area of the city) and found our hostel.  The hostel looked a little drab outside but inside it was really beautiful (sorry no pics) and after dropping our stuff off and a quick explanation of what to see and do in Marseille from the hostel employees we headed out to explore but not before a quick bite to eat (I must say that French food is DELICIOUS!!!).

Our first stop was this little park which I must say was very little and not that impressive.  There was a sign which Nick translated which stated that there had been great aspirations for the park yet with only modest realizations (I think I will remember that line for the next time that I utterly fail at something).

The next location was this cathredeal on top of a hill (the highest point in Marseille).  It was absolutely stunning and the view was fantastic as well

After leaving the cathredeal we headed down the hill back to the old port to check out a couple of castles we had heard about.

Finally we slowly wondered our way back to our hostel to get a shower and ready for dinner (yum more French food)

The next day we were off to one of the two islands just off the cost of Marseille.  The first picture is of Chateau d'if (this is where they filmed that movie the count of monte cristo) but the chateau was expensive to see and we figured that there was not much there so we opted to head for the second island which had several old forts.  The island was about 2 km long and we walked that thing from tip to tail.  For lunch we had a delicious lunch of mussels and fries (the mussels came in a cream sauce that was sooooooo goooood!), not great hiking food but that is alright.  After a complete exploration of the entire island (including the german fortifications left over from world war II) we decided to head back to the main land.  As you can see I managed to get a little sun.  That night I was not feeling really well, stupid sunburn, so needless to say it was a bit of a quiet evening.

The next day we were off to explore a part and found this beautiful water fountain.  As we were walking back to the Hostel to pick up our stuff we found this bakery (it has been around for 200 years) and had to sample some of their delicious pastries (they were so good).  A little further on we came across this store which sold delicious french cookies and caramel (amazingly good, it is fortunate that I don't live in Marseille full time or else I would be fat for sure, fat but happy).

Then it was back to the airport to conclude our quick trip, all in all a good time had by all.