A Week Under Marseille's Sun

Back in February or March, I started looking at my calendar and realized that once classes finished, I was going to have about 3.5 weeks in France before coming home. Knowing that I had decided not to take the bac but that my host siblings and friends would be reviewing for and then taking it, I was worried that I would end up bored and waste my last few weeks in France. So, I decided to take advantage of an opportunity offered by AFS in France: spending a week with another AFS family in a different region. After a little bit of research, I decided to ask to spend some time in Marseille, the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte D'Azur, also known as PACA. Thanks to the willingness of a wonderful AFS volunteer to open her home to me, I got to spend last week chilling out under the sun in Marseille while all of France's teenagers tackled their bac. It was really cool to visit another region and live at the pace in the South, which is a bit slower and more relaxed than in the busy North. So, if you don't care about my week in Marseille, go ahead and skip this post, but for anyone interested, brace yourself, because this post is going to be long. I apologize for all of the excessive details, but this way, when I get around to making my "Year in France" scrapbook, all I have to do is print out my blog posts.

Monday morning, I grabbed my suitcase, triple checked that I had all of my train tickets, and then my host mom drove me to the train station in my town. I took a TER(regional train) to Lille where I then changed stations with a crowd of other travelers to the newer, more modern station that does the TGV(rapid, inter-regional trains.) I looked at the big board showing all of the trains(being amazed by how well organized and easy it was to understand and then thinking about how confusing it is to find trains in Sacramento where the info is given on the PA system in a completely impossible to understand, mushy voice) and easily found my TGV. After a few uneventful hours on the train, I arrived in Marseille where I got off to meet the volunteer that would host me. It was only as I got off the train that I realized that I had no idea what she looked like or where she would be. Luckily, she had thought ahead and made a little sign, so I found her without any trouble. We headed back to her apartment, made dinner, and then slept to be ready for a filled week. My host wasn't working at all that week, so she was able to take my all over the place, and it was great to have a guide.

On Tuesday, we decided to tour the city. We first went to Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde to see the city from up high.

Notre Dame de la Garde is the cathedral up on the hill, and it really is one of the highest points in Marseille. You get a great view from the top. (Photo courtesy of fotocommunity)

This is the basilisque de Notre Dame de la Garde.

This is Marseille seen from ND de la Garde.

Here's another view of Marseille from ND de la Garde. In the background, the little island is the chateau d'if, and the two further back are the Frioul islands. Unfortunately, the photo quality is not very good because the pollution was very visible that day.

I was told that my plaid shorts and my visor marked me as a tourist from a kilometer away, but I didn't care. In the North, I did try a bit to blend in since I would be living there, but in the south, I was there as a tourist so what did it matter if people could tell?

After we were done looking around from up high, we walked back down into the heart of the city. We strolled around the old port which now serves as the home for most of the little pleasure boats. The cruise ship port is a little ways away(you can see it from the old port, and I went past it in the train, spotting the Atlantic Start docked in the port) and the new industrial port has been moved away from the city, just a few kilometers away. The old port is a long rectangle, and being on one side, it is actually quite a walk to get to the other side in going all the way around. Luckily, there is a free ferry that goes back and forth taking passengers.

The ferry boat to go from one side of the port to the other.

After the port, we walked around in the basket district, one of the older neighborhoods in Marseille. As my host explained, Marseille is less of a cohesive city than a grouping a many linked neighborhoods. We also went to an ancient artifacts museum with a lot of artifacts found not far from Marseille. According to my host, Marseille was established as a city at least 600 years before Christ. Once done in the basket district, we headed back to the old port to grab an ice cream cone before heading back. One thing that was slightly annoying throughout the week as we got ice creams was that they were often very soft. They were more of a gelato texture than the nice, hard scoop of ice cream texture. They all had nice flavor, but where too soft and melted too fast. The other thing I noticed was that the size of the scoops bothered me. I'm used to nice, big, American-sized Baskin Robbins scoops of ice cream. So here, when the scoops were tiny, it bothered me way more than it should have. I'm sure if I had grown up paying that price for small scoops it would have been fine, but being used to American scoops, I felt like we were getting ripped off each time.

I Love ICE CREAM!!!!! (Especially when it was actually hot outside, after 10 months in the north where it was never really hot enough to enjoy the great cooling effects of ice cream.)

On Wednesday, I met up with another exchange student spending time in Marseille like me. She actually spent the whole year in the north, just like me, and it was a fun coincidence that we were in Marseille at the same time. We went to the Calanques, which are little coves along the coast where a lot of people like to swim. We took the bus to the trail head, armed with water, our lunches, and swimsuits, and headed off to look for adventure. We spent a great day together, hiking to the coves, swimming in the Mediterranean, and tanning. After we got back to downtown, we went to a beach close to my friend's host, which was a sort of mini beach boardwalk. There was a Ferris wheel and a few other rides, a bunch of treat stands and ice cream stores, and a few volleyball courts. It was so cool to be completely independent, thanks to the great public transit system and the fact that it stayed light until around 9:00 pm. I came back at 7:30 and it was still full daylight. My host, who had spent the day shopping and running errands, surprised me when I got back with a big bowl of tapenade(olive spread). My host dad had brought a small bottle back with him after a weekend in Nice, another city in the south, and I had really liked it. So, after I had expressed an interest in having some while I was in Marseille, she went to a store where they sell it in bulk and you choose how much you want yourself, rather than selling it in the tiny bottles. It was so yummy, and throughout the whole week, I ate bread with tapenade for an appetizer whenever we were at home for lunch or dinner. 

This is the place where we ended up swimming, a calanque called Sugiton.

When we arrived, there weren't too many people yet. We were lucky to have come on a weekday instead of a weekend. It also rained a bit in the morning, so people were probably a bit slower to come out. But, by the time we had finished eating and swimming, it was starting to get crowded. The rock you can see directly behind my head is an island, and a lo of people were jumping from it. Both of us were dying to jump, but decided not to risk it since we didn't know whether it was deep enough and safe enough.

The trail we took really was a bit of an adventure. We had to climb a ladder as we left the cove, and at another point, we had to slide down a crevice on our butts. It was really fun. And, we couldn't help laughing internally a little bit as we saw people doing the trail in the other direction and wondered how they were going to climb up the crevice we had slid down. See that red mark on the rock, about level with my knee? That was a trail marker, and shows that yes, indeed, you are required to climb the ladder. The trails were really well marked, and we could usually see the next mark from the one we were at. That made us more confident as we slid down crevices and clambered over rocks.

Here's another, more crowded beach/cove.

On Thursday, I went with my AFS host to the Château d'If and the Îles Friouls. We took a boat from the Old Port and the first stop was the Château d'If.

On the boat as we headed out to the prison.

It is a prison that was used for a very long time and held some famous prisoners. It was often used to hold protestants when the catholics were worried that they would start uprisings. Of course, its most famous prisoner happens to also be fictional, but that's ok. This is the prison where Edmond Dantés was locked up for many years before escaping and becoming the Count of Monte Cristo. We could tour his cell, and there was even a video system in the cell next to it which allowed you to see yourself locked in a cell. Thanks to the book Le Conte de Monte Cristo, the island became a public monument in 1880, but it was used once again as a prison during WW1 when it held German prisoners. After the war, it reopened as a public monument, and has been ever since.  Just like in San Francisco with the escape from Alcatraz, each year they host the Défi de Monte-Cristo(Monte Cristo's Challenge) which is a swim race from the island to Marseille.

Here's the island and the prison seen from the boat.

After the château d'if, we got back on the boat(which was doing loops from Marseille to the prison to the Frioul Islands to Marseille) and headed to the Frioul Islands. The two islands, which are now connected by a man-made road, are part of a group of 4(which include If and another tiny island.) There is a small village with apartments and some restaurants on one of the two big islands. Besides that, there are some old buildings that served military purposes to protect Marseille, as well as an old hospital that used to be a quarantine. When the epidemics of pests and diseases were spreading across the seas, boats suspected of carrying infected people had to stop in the Frioul islands to be cleared. This was to protect mainland Europe from the infections, since Marseille was an important port city.

This is an old building on the Frioul Islands that used to be part of a fort.

We hiked around one of the two islands, stopping to eat our sandwiches, before heading back to the city. Instead of taking the boring old metro back to her apartment, we took a boat shuttle which went along the coast. It was fun, and definitely a cooler way to commute than with the metro or the bus.

On Friday, after a slow morning, we packed up the car and headed off to go camping. In high vacation season, you would normally have to make a reservation, but since everyone is still in school except high school students, we were ok. We drove about 1.5 hours west of Marseille to the Camargue, which is where the Rhône river flattens out and meets the Mediterranean. It is one of those rare and important ecosystems where fresh water and salt water meet, and a resting place for lots of birds. The camping ground was right next to a town called Les-Saintes-Mairies-de-la-mer. It wasn't really camping in nature so much as a cheaper alternative to a hotel in the very touristic town. The basic fee gets you a campsite, and you can have a tent and 1 or 2 people. Then you can pay supplements to have extra people, extra tents, electricity, and even a refrigerator. The campground was right next to the beach and there was a pool with a water slide and everything. We pitched our tent and then headed off for a walk along the beach.

As the sun started to slowly go down and the wind started to pick up, the kite surfers came out to play in the waves. They were lots of fun to watch.

So, let's take a minute to talk about something very cliché french: nude beaches. In my mind, I had always imagined nude beaches as huge, crowded sandy beaches where everyone would be walking around naked. Well, it doesn't exactly work like that. I stumbled across a few places during the week with some nudists, but it wasn't like in my imagination. When I was in the Calanques with my friend, we came across a small but pretty crowded beach. There was a woman strolling around in the shallow water without a top on, and there were two or three women lying on the beach topless. I know in the states people sometimes lie on their stomachs topless to tan their backs, but I had never seen anyone lying on their back topless. Oh, and men with speedos is WAY more popular in France than in the states. You don't see boys or men in board shorts. Ever. Speedos is the way to go. Anyway, back to the nude beaches. So then, when we were walking in the Frioul Islands, there were lots of small coves with beaches along the coasts. In one, there was a naked guy just walking around, sometimes swimming and sometimes tanning. The AFS lady said that usually, people don't have the right to be nude, but as long as they're pretty much hidden, they can get away with it. And then, finally, when we were on the beach next to the camping, there were a few people without swimsuits here and there. Some were tanning semi-hidden in the dunes while others were just boldly strolling along the beach in their birthday suits. But, it definitely wasn't a sort of "reserved," crowded "Nudists' beach" like I had imagined. It was just some people here and there.

So, after a long walk along the beach, we went back to the camping ground, hopped in the car, and drove into the town to get dinner. Basically, we had two choices of food: Italian or Seafood. It would have been the perfect chance to try famous bouillabaisse, the typical fish soup/stew in Provence, but since I don't like, fish, we went for Italian. There was also a strong Spanish influence in the area, with dishes like Paella and tapas available at many restaurants. You could also find bull steaks and bull sausages. And in the restaurant we went to, there were two guys who wandered through the restaurant playing guitar and singing in spanish. At the Italian restaurant, they gave us sangria and olives as a free appetizer, so I tried the drink. Even though the alcohol taste wasn't very strong, it was still present enough to prevent me from liking the drink. I guess its a good thing I don't like alcohol rather than falling in love with it. After dinner, we walked into town to look around. We saw all kinds of people in pink t-shirts, and couldn't figure out what it was. After a little bit, we saw a bunch of people lining up on the sides of the main road, so we guessed that something was probably going to happen.  We finally asked the man next to us what it was all about, and he explained. It was the "Fête Votive," meaning there were bull-fighting and activities like that all throughout the week, another example of the Spanish Influence in southern france. That night was an activity with a group of horses acting as the guardians for 4 bulls that were running just behind them. Then all of the kids in the town(the ones who had been wearing the pink t-shirts) were trying to divert the bulls and separate them from the guardians. But, they weren't very successful, and both times they went pasts us, we just saw the horses and the bulls in the middle and a whole crowd of noisy kids running along the outside.

Here's the huge group of people, horse, and bulls running along down the main street.

Here, you can sort of see the bulls. They have their head practically in between the horses to stay protected, and the kids are trying to make them come out, away from the guardians to wreak havoc in the streets. At one point, they did get one bull slightly separated from the group, but all it did was speed up to hide again.

There were also some aspects of a parade, because decorated cars like these came along afterwards to cheer. I think they are all dressed like flamingos because pink flamingos are typical in the camargue.

After the activity was over, everyone seemed to be heading to the beach, so we followed them. There was a stage set up and a group of musicians started to play. Soon afterwards, a group of horses and riders holding candles came onto the beach and rode around the stage. I'm guessing they did some formation riding and stuff, but since the mosquitoes were eating us alive and it was 11:00 pm, we decided to head back to the campground.

This is the group of horses and riders getting ready to ride onto the beach. The riders had on traditional clothes and each carried a lit candle.

On Saturday, we woke up pretty early as the sun turned our tent into an oven. After a rough night, we headed to the snack bar to get breakfast and coffee. We then drove into town to pick up food and snacks for our lunch, popped into the tourism office to ask for advice about what to do, and then headed off to the bird park. It was a preserved space, meant as a landing place for the migrating birds and other permanent birds in the special salt water/fresh water mix marsh. Mostly, we saw flamingos and ducks, but there were lots of different species.

At first, these birds were so stationary we thought that they were just a statue set up by the park, but then we realized that they were real as they started to move and the young ones started to squabble for food.

Here's a group of flamingos. There were a few different types of flamingos, and different groups were all over the marshes. I even saw some flamingos flying, which was cool since in the zoo, they always have clipped wings. They were really graceful.

These are horses of the camargue, a special breed of horses that you can find all over the camargue. In general, they seem to be used for horse-back riding trips and to control the bulls. But they were often allowed to roam free in the marsh areas as well.

After the bird park, we headed back to go swimming in the Mediterranean. It felt great to play in the gentle waves and lie on the beach after the day of hiking. After the beach, I decided to take advantage of the pool and went down the slide a few times. We took showers, and then walked to town this time, since we had some extra time. After looking around the town, we ended up at the same restaurant since we had liked the ambiance. That night's "Fête Votive" activity was what I would call "Bull Teasing." They set up a course on the main street and lined it with the special yellow fences which human can slide in and out of but bulls can't. I'm not sure what the goal was, except to have an entertaining spectacle, but they released one bull at a time and then the teenagers in their pink shirts were running around. They would tap the bull's horns or hit it on the rump, and a few daring kids pulled on its tail. They would stand right next to the fences, brusquely stick out their arms and legs in front of the bull, and once it saw them, they would pull back in. One bull charged the fences once or twice, but in general, the people in charge let the bulls go back into the truck before they got too irritated and dangerous. After the bull-teasing, we walked back to our campground and slept soundly, exhausted after the day.  

There were signs like these all over the town during the few days we were there. They say "Danger Manifestations Taurines et Équestres" which means "Danger, bull-fighting and equestrian events."

This is one of the bulls after a few laps. Mostly, the kids sort of chased the bull up and down the course. These were not full-sized bulls, but they were still dangerous. The kids had energy and enthusiasm, but we could tell that they were scared, which is probably a good thing and prevented any serious injuries. The yellow barriers are wide enough that the kids could easily go in and out, but too narrow for the bulls. Some of the older men who were in charge of the event and commentating had to suck in their bellies to be able to get through.

Sunday morning, we packed up the tent and headed out, this time the destination being Arles. Arles is another really old town that was an important town during the time of the roman empire but lost importance when the invasions began, and then once the trains replaced the boats as the primary means of transporting goods. We went to an ancient arena where they used to do gladiator fights and an ancient theater, both built in the 1st century BCE.

The old, Roman arena.

The arena was still in really good shape, thanks to a lot of restoration efforts by the town.

Today, there are metal bleachers installed inside that work together with the old stone structure to create a functional arena that is used today for bull-fighting events.

We took a different route to come back to Marseille, passing along the coast. We took a little ferry to cross a branch of the Rhône and then drove along the coast. As we drove through l'ésatque, a little tourist area next to Marseille, my host was seized with memories.

This is L'éstauqe, the little painter's village and now touristy area next to Marseille. The beaches were completely full to bursting with families enjoying their sunny Sunday afternoon.

 She was telling me about how she used to walk there with her siblings to go swimming when they were young, and how they would buy panisses and chichis. We ended up passing three little kiosques where they sell them, and she was suddenly craving a chichi, so we stopped and I got to try them.

This is the kiosque we went to. Apparently you can find chichis at fairs as well, but they are nowhere near as good as the ones made here.

They were really really good, and super fresh. We didn't get panisses, but they are fried slices of garbonzo bean puree. Chichis are sort of like donuts or churros, fried dough and rolled in sugar. They had a citrus flavor to them that I was told comes from the use of fleur d'oranger to flavor them.

The stand was worked by three people. There was one guy who did the frying, the lady you see here who cut and rolled them in sugar, and a young woman that took the orders and the money.

When they come out of the frier, the chichis look like this. Then, they are cut into individual portions.

These portions were then rolled in sugar, a little piece of paper wrapped around the middle for easy eating, and placed in a bag. When you order two chichis, you also get a little bonus in the bag: an extra little chunk like the one you see on the left of the photo.

 We got back to Marseille exhausted, unpacked the car, whipped up some dinner, and then rolled into bed.

Monday morning, I packed up my suitcases, hopped on a train, and headed to Lyon for another week's worth of adventures. Stay tuned.