Marseille

On Saturday, two friends and I went to Marseille! I booked the first train to the coastal city and the last train back so we could have the most possible time there. Heading to the train station at 5:00 a.m. almost made me regret this decision. Travel thankfully went smoothly, and Regan and I arrived in Marseille around 8:15 a.m. We started the day at the Palais Longchamp, counterintuitively walking away from the water. Palais Longchamp includes gardens with incredible water features, colonnades, statues, and an art and history museum. We explored the exterior until the art museum opened at 9:00, then perused the first floor of art. We opted to skip the second floor in order to have time to walk back to the Vieux Port to meet Bryanna, whose bus arrived later than our train.

In the Vieux Port, we waited in line for boat tickets. The original plan had been to take a boat to the Château d'If, tour the prison, and return. The Château d'If, if the name doesn't ring any bells, is the prison in which Edmond Dantes was incarcerated in The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Unfortunately, the weather conditions were too rough for boats to stop at the island, so we had to get tickets to Port du Frioul, on another island, instead. The boat ride was windy and a bit choppy, but I've been on worse boat tours before. I wasn't entirely sure why it would have been impossible to dock at the Château d'If, but I guess the boat company knows what it's doing. On the way to Frioul, we passed by the Château d'If, so at least we were able to see it from the outside. (And the boat was named Edmond Dantes, so there was that.) Frioul itself was a cute little port with orange buildings, restaurants and gift shops, and a colony of cats. Right around the time we found the cats, a little dog out for a leash-less walk found them too, so we got to watch the amusing chase.

We tried to get lunch around 11:30, but none of the restaurants were serving food yet. We decided to take the boat back to the Vieux Port to find lunch there. Eventually, we found a reasonably priced restaurant with options we liked just off the main street. I got salmon gnocchi, which was very good, especially after adding some of Regan's lemon. After lunch, we walked to what we thought was Fort Saint-Jean but was actually the Citadel Saint-Nicholas. Most of the citadel was blocked off for construction, but the view from the top of the hill was worth the walk up the stairs. The Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde was on that side of the port, but it was a thirty minute uphill walk and also under renovation, so we skipped it. Instead, we circled around the port, stopping for ice cream along the way. I got raspberry sorbet. On the other side of the Vieux Port, we passed a second boat company that was actually going to the Château d'If, with the disclaimer that it would be a rough ride. We hesitated over going but decided to continue on to the fort. The entrance to the fort proved tricky to find. We circled around the outside of it and sat beside the water for a bit. When we got back around to the front without finding a door to the fort instead of to the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations, we continued to the Cathédrale La Major. The neo-byzantine cathedral, done in the same style as the Basilique de Fouvière in Lyon, was airy and light, decorated in bold swathes of bright color. It was probably my second favorite church of my study abroad experience, after the Mont-Saint-Michel abbey.

After the cathedral, we went back toward Fort Saint-Jean and this time figured out how to get in, by going up a staircase and across a metal bridge over the busy road beside the port. It turned out that the fort and the museum were the same building, but the exterior parts of the fort were free, whereas the museum exhibits were paid. None of us were that interested in the museum, so we didn't pay for it, but we enjoyed walking through the old, sand-colored fort. As we walked around, Bryanna and I decided to go to the Château d'If, while Regan wanted to shop in the port area. Unfortunately, by the time we made it through the fort and did the math, we realized that the hour and fifty minute Château d'If trip would likely take too long if we wanted to get dinner and make it to the train station on time. My hopes of making it to the prison were dashed a second time. But that's just an excuse to go back to the south of France anyway! Instead, we stuck together and took the most crowded bus in existence to the Plage des Catalans. It was in the high sixties (I was comfortable in my leather jacket, tank top, and jeans in the shade and comfortable without the leather jacket in the sun; the Lake Michigan principle that it's always cooler by the water still applies to the Mediterranean) so the beach was much more crowed than we had expected. We hadn't brought swimsuits because we didn't think it would really be warm enough, and it seemed like too much trouble to change and dry off without a hotel room to return to. We skipped finding a tiny patch of sand to sit in, discovering instead a rock retaining wall in a much less packed spot. It was incredibly peaceful watching sailboats on the horizon and listening to the salsa class going on nearby.

Then it was time to start heading to the train station a forty-minute walk away. On the way, we found a bakery to get a light dinner at. Bryanna's return bus was after the train, so we said our goodbyes. At the station, I realized my phone was at 29% and my external battery was dead because we had all been using it as needed throughout the day. The outlet by the bench we were waiting on didn't work, but we were able to find another, nicer, slightly hidden waiting area with working outlets. My phone was up to 40% by the time we scanned our tickets to get on the train. I assumed I would be able to charge my phone on the train. Due to a terrible design, however, the only outlet was on the wall by the window seat, and I was in the aisle. The man next to me slept for most of the ride, so I was unable to reach the outlet. I read my ebook for a little while, then stopped to conserve battery, as my phone was my train ticket. I still had 20-something percent when the train pulled into Part Dieu. Enough to check when the next tram would pull up to the stop outside the train station. That was good. The four minutes in between the train arriving and the tram leaving was not good. The thirty minute wait for the next tram was worse. I got lucky that the train arrived at a platform close to the main entrance/exit of the station. As soon as I realized where I was in the station, I ran for the tram stop. I rounded the corner by the stop, and the tram was just coming into sight down the track. I crossed the tracks with just enough time to make it to the correct platform, saved by the fact that after so many times going back and forth from Part Dieu, I knew exactly where I needed to be.

Note: You may or may not have noticed that my posts have fewer pictures than they used to. This is because Wix unfortunately only has so much photo storage, and I'm starting to run out. As a friendly reminder, you can find more pictures on my Instagram, @autumnmayer6.