First part: Marseille, June 3rd to June 6th, 2009
Oh, Marseille how I love this city. I would describe Marseille as edgy, laid-back, active, doesn't give a flying f*@k what you think of me city. It is Denver meets New York City. It is amazing! I like Paris, but Marseille makes Paris that boring, more popular kid who gets by on a name. Make it to Marseille in your life and I promise you it will change the way you view France.
Patrick, Brook, and myself arrived at 9:30 in the morning and made our way to our hostel. We stayed at this place called La Cigale et la Fourmi, the cicada and the ant, it was a hippie commune. We slept in a lofted space with beds on the ground with any where from 10 to 20 strangers. People were coming in and out of the place from all walks of life and we paid at the end of our stay, since you never know how long you are going to stay! We were all a little skeptical when we arrived especially since some kid yelled down the door access code from a window while a cigarette balanced between his fingers. We couldn't understand what he said but the cute old French lady, who lived next door and was outside, helped us since she knew the code too. What?
You enter a tiny hallway only to go up a set of an even tiny stair case that felt like an Escher drawing. We finally made it to the main room, where there was a red couch with some guy sleeping on it, and a series of foreigners being served coffee by a French Filipino. We "checked-in" with Jean, the owner, and were showed to our beds by a Belgian lady named JoJo. More to come on our little hippie commune in a bit but all in all, it was great!
We left our commune to see the city. We took a bus to the metro, took the metro into the city, and then another bus to the Basilique de Notre Dame de la Garde. It is a really cool church that sits on top of La Garde hill on the east side of the old port. We had lunch there and saw the church and crazy tourists. From there we walked down the hill to the old port to the west side of the port to the old part of Marseille. From there we went to Cathedrale Le Major and then walked along the sea back into the old port. On our map of Marseille there was an advertisement to taste artisan pastis which was located on our way home so we stopped by to check in out. It was really good pastis and we learned that pastis actually originated from Absinthe. For those of you who don't know pastis, it is an anise flavored liquor. It is a very refreshing summer drink. We then went home and ate dinner and hung out with the rest of the people at our commune. It was a special evening as we had great conversations with a variety of people and nationalities. It was one of those nights that only happen at hippie communes minus the hippie hypocritical rhetoric.
The next day we went to Cassis, the next town over, to hike the Calanques. We hiked a couple of hours to a remote beach with only about 30 people or so at any given time. The hike was kind of difficult as there was a bunch of loose rocks through out the whole trail and the rocks were incredibly slippery. Right before getting to the second beach where we swam, we had to hike down a steep hill to the bottom. However, don't worry folks I had the proper foot ware. I hiked this part in my flip-flops. :)! What...I needed to work on my flip-flop tan.
The beach was quiet enough that you could here the water and birds more than the other people on the beach.
Oh, and a really annoying helicopter doing some sort of exercise that no one could figure out but everyone on the beach watched with utter confusion; oh, and took a photo of it. On occasion you saw a tour boat that takes tourist to all of the Calanques come by but it was far enough out that it wasn't too annoying. It was one of the coolest things I have ever done in my short life. The sea water was clear with a slight bluish-green color, but refreshingly cold. I don't think you could drown even if you wanted to as you would just float back to the top. I think we spent 5 hours on the beach once we got there. This being said, it was difficult to want to leave let alone muster the courage and energy to hike back. Throughout the day we saw a variety of people leave a different route than we came up the side of cliff that created the south wall of the Calanques. One family left with their dog on this route so we thought we should give it a try.
I wore my tennis shoes for this part of the hike home as I thought I was pushing my luck with hiking in flip-flops there. I am very glad that I did as there was no trail only three separate sections of a wall of rock. Yep, the three of us rock-climbed out. I can safely say the three of us were all a little afraid and realized that we were idiots for following strangers out of a place we had never been before. Ironically, Brook and I moments before leaving this way were discussing rock-climbing and how much fun it can be and wish we could do it more often. God has a sense of humor, no?
We made it out alive and a little smarter.
The rest of the hike home was fine but we were all very tired. We finally made it home after walking to a shuttle bus, which then took us to the train station where an older French man preceded to tell us that all of France's problems are do to the Arabs. Have Patrick and I mentioned how racist some French people can be?
We got home around 9, 9:30, and ate dinner and went to bed. The next day was spent not doing a whole lot as we were all beat. Brook and I did go to the Fashion Museum and then we all had a beer at a cafe. That night we hung out at the commune and had a fun time until we all went to bed around 1 am.
This concludes our Marseille part of the trip. It was amazing and slightly terrifying. Tomorrow for part two of this series we are off to Montpellier.
Molly
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