Marseille, Round One: Je l'adore!

Bonjour du Sud de la France!

I wrote this as I was wrapping up my journey through the south of France, but now, as indicated in my last post, I am comfortably back in my house in Lyon. I had beyond a wonderful time being in the south, though, and will start telling you all about it at the very beginning (a very good place to start)!

My friend Molly (whom I have traveled with before) and I went down to Marseille for a few days to start things off. Marseille is an interesting place in France, because every time that I told someone I was going there, they told me to be careful and be vigilant about my belongings. Which I was, obviously, and always am, but I think I heard that more than I needed to for the experience that I had; that’s also just an example of the bad rep the city has. Despite this, though, I fell in love with the Marseille. We had gotten a SUPER early train to Marseille - I'm talking, we had to be at the train station at 5:30am early. (Oh, the things we'll do to save a few euros.) When we first got there, we spent some time at the local Starbucks, as any good American would. I had to finish up a paper and send it to my professor, and we had some time to kill before we could check into the hostel (seeing as we got there before 8am.) Then we took off to find the hostel. We were hoping for sunshine and warm weather while we were there, which unfortunately was not the case the entire time. Well, the sunny part was, at first. Which tricked us big time, because as soon as we got into the city and to the hostel, we changed into our bathing suits and ~beachy dresses~ and were going to head to the beach. But then, joke's on us! It was super windy and way too cold for those clothes and/or the beach. Sooo we took some pictures of the Vieux Port (that means old port) and the things nearby, then went up to one of Napoleon’s old palaces and snapped some more pictures. Then we headed back to the hostel immediately to put on real clothes.

Look, the ocean! (Or the Mediterranean. same thing.)

  

Le Pharo, Napoleon's old stomping grounds 

reactions to the unexpectedly cold weather

After we changed clothes, we met up with one of our friends who lives there! We met a fellow traveler, Tomas, in our hostel in Madrid. He lives in Marseille, and was SO kind in meeting up with us and showing us around the city. We pretty much had a cool private tour of the town given by a local! It was awesome to hang out with our friend again, and was a great opportunity to speak French with a real French person! (Hear that, everyone? I spoke French all. day. long. Yay!) The first place that we went was an old hospital that was open during the time of the plague. Casual, right? (Our pictures show us being terrified of the plague, fyi.) Then we went to the city’s Cathedral, which was really beautiful, inside and outside. See for yourself!

back of the cathedral

aaand the front. or the facade, if you will ;)

casual view in front of the church

The inside boasts some flags and a magnificent altar, among other things.

  

Next, we walked around a little bit more, chatting and stuffs. And I had to take a bathroom break (of course). After wandering, we decided to go up to the Notre Dame Basilica on top of a giant hill. It was BREATHTAKING. Like, SO gorgeous. Not only is the basilica itself wonderful, but the views of the city from up there are almost too beautiful to be real. Marseille is the second largest city in France, so there is an incredible view of this giant cityscape from up there. Even more than that, though, it’s located on the Mediterranean, with mountains on the inland side of the city. We walked all around the outside of the church to get a true panorama of the area. Unfortunately, we spent too long doing that (which was necessary!), so by the time we had finished, the basilica was closing. We didn’t get to go inside, but apparently it’s all covered in gold (surprise, surprise). [Edit: my host mom told me yesterday that I should have gone in, because it's famous for its decor inside. The church is called "Notre Dame de la Garde," so people pray to Mary there for safety. Once they are granted safety (traveling, I'm guessing), they thank her by bringing photos of sailboats or boats in a bottle. These gifts all line the walls up to the ceiling, and there isn't much room left for them. My bad for missing that, but cool that she told me about it!] I’m going to stop ranting about this beauty, though, and just show it to you! :)

the Basilique Notre Dame from afar, guarding the city

Just hangin out on top of the city

one picture of the actual basilica

We then wandered around the city a little bit more with Tomas, then parted ways for the night, and went to get some food! We ate real food, at a real restaurant, which is a rarity for me. We each had a pasta serving thing (I forget which kind) which was really delicious, and a salad, of course. We ended up spending about two hours eating dinner (!!) like real French people! Hey, we’re kind of catching on to this! After dinner, we were both super exhausted (from getting on a train at 6:30 am that morning…) so we headed back to the hostel and went to sleep right away! So we could be refreshed for the next day’s adventures!

Oh yeah, before we went to dinner, we ran into the Palais de Justice and took some pictures! Voila:

On Saturday, the weather was significantly less sunny. In fact, it was raining all day. Therefore, we tried to find some better indoor activities, which proved to be more difficult than we had imagined. The first place we went was Le Palais Longchamp. It was a former palace, or something… as the name would indicate. Our goal was to go to either the art museum or the natural history museum, which are located on either side of this fountain building thing, facing each other. Joke’s on us again! They were both closed. Boo. But we still got some awesome pictures with the palace/fountain! With the terrible rainy, foreboding weather in the sky.

 

Next we went to another church (have you caught on to the “churches in Europe” thing, yet? I think I’m going to dedicate a photo album to all of them, or something.) to get inside and out of the weather. I think it was the church of Sainte Jeanne d’Arc (translation: Joan of Arc), judging by her statue standing out front. This church was really cool because it had not only dedications to saints, but also descriptions of their lives along the sides of the church. They also were mostly modern saints, and they even had stuff up for Mother Theresa (obviously a not saint yet, but who is on her way to being canonized).

The remainder of the day was spent walking around the city (the rain let up a little bit, thankfully) and seeing some more (smaller/lesser known) sites, as it was our last real day there. I really enjoy, while traveling, being able to just walk around and explore the city, and get to know its feel/atmosphere. After a little while, we hopped back over to the hostel (just kidding, we actually walked there), got some food for dinner, and went to sleep early again. The day was great, but long and tiring. Then the next day we hopped on a train to go to Aix-en-Provence!

As I said at the beginning of this post, I really love Marseille. It’s the second biggest city in France, which is great because I prefer big cities to smaller towns (which is part of the reason I’m studying in Lyon right now as opposed to a different program in France. Lyon is the third biggest city after Marseille). It’s also a beach down, which means that it is much more relaxed, in general, than Lyon is. I could see this even in the way everyone dressed. There wasn’t as much pressure to look or dress a certain way; everybody just kinda does their own thing and let’s everyone else do theirs, which takes away the pressure of having to dress more nicely to fit in. (Not that this feeling is overwhelming in Lyon, but people tend to dress a little bit more nicely here.) As the city is located in the Mediterranean, it takes in a lot of immigrants from northern Africa, as well as other places, which means the city’s population is SO much more ethnically diverse than the rest (of what I’ve seen) of France. All of these things combined are the reasons why I fell in love with Marseille, even if the weather wasn’t as great as I expected and I couldn’t go to the beach. This is a beautiful city where I could actually see myself living… don’t worry, though, I’ll come home first and visit for awhile. ;)

One final fun fact, Marseille is the European Cultural Capital for 2013! These signs were everywhere. 

Et, voila, le matin d'après, j'ai dit "au revoir" à Marseilles pour quelques jours. Up next: Aix-en-Provence! A bientôt!

[Oh, yeah, and I got a little bored with my old layout, so I updated it a bit. Hope you enjoy it!]