Paris to Marseille 8/30/2008

We checked out of the hotel and took the metro to the train station. We had never ridden the train before in Europe and had to ask several people until we figured out where we got our pass stamped. We were also new at reading our train ticket and when boarding the train went right to where we thought we should belong, at the front of the train in the first class car. We didn’t take a closer look at our tickets until we got to the very front of the train and our seat numbers were not in the car, and then realized that we were not in car 1, but car 15. I got in a long argument with the conductor about how it was an outrage that such high class citizens like Kelly and I would be required to sit in the back with the commoners, but I decided to take the high road and we ultimately sat in the back.

The train ride was probably like 4 hour or so. It was very pretty to see the countryside and the small towns. We saw an old aqueduct.

We arrived in Marseille and took a bus from the train station to Chateau Gambert. I think this would be like a neighborhood within Marseille, but it was much more rural than downtown Marseille. We walked up a hill to a large house that was to be our hostel. We found out that it was basically a bed and breakfast type place. There was a couple with a child who lived upstairs, and rented out rooms downstairs to travelers. They were extremely nice and spoke pretty good English.

They recommended a pizza restaurant down the road for dinner. We walked to it and they spoke very little English, so it was fun for me to try my best to talk with them. I found out that I knew surprisingly more French than I would have anticipated, since I hadn’t used it since high school. We talked a little while we waited for the pizza, and then took the pizza back to our room at the bed and breakfast to eat. The room was very large and very nice. It was filled with a bookcase with French books, and paintings that a friend of the family had done. Just outside our room was a nice sitting area where we ate our pizza and coke (which was the cheapest meal by far of the trip so far). Using the G.W.M., (Grant Williard Method, commonly used for creating spreadsheets but can also be applicable for photographs [see exhibits 2, 4, 78]), I took a picture of us at dinner.

After dinner we talked with our hosts for a little bit. We asked about a picture in our bathroom of a place called Les Calanques, and they helped give us directions there for tomorrow before we left for Barcelona. We told them that we would be staying in Prague for three months and they gave us tons of restaurants and recommendations about the city, since they had recently visited. One of the restaurants was one that Kate’s boyfriend Oliver had also mentioned, Klub Architectu, so we would be sure to see that.

We went to bed early in anticipation for our journey to Les Calanques in the morning.