Top - Marseille's very own Arc de Triomphe (Porte d'Aix) near Gare Saint Charles
Middle - Rachel and Alex a la plage
Bottom - The sunset from le Palais du Pharo
Monday. Alex was coming to visit today. It's the holidays for the best part of two weeks so he said he'd come down to visit Marseille. He's a language assistant like me but in Chambery, near Grenoble. His train was due to arrive at 14h23 so me and Rachel went to La Poste in the morning as I had a parcel to collect. Never again. In the future all parcels can go uncollected. It's always busy in La Poste but this was ridiculous. We went in and there were about 4 or 5 people infront of us in the queue. After about 50 minutes of queuing the man closed his counter much to the anger of all the people still waiting to be served - including us. We were now only 2 people away from my parcel. The man behind us went completely mad so the cashier agreed to serve up to this man. When we finally left La Poste, complete with parcel, it was over an hour later. An hour we'd been queuing for this parcel, an hour! Ridiculous. We went home and had omlette for lunch only to realise we were now going to be late meeting Alex at Gare Saint Charles, oops. We weren't that late and well, it served him right for calling Marseille a ghetto. Although arriving on the train and then walking back to mine through Le Passage Lorette doesn't exactly make for excellent first impressions of Marseille... Infact, I doubt it could get much worse. We came back and did the washing up (we hadn't had time to do it before going to get Alex). Later on we took Alex to Le Palais du Pharo where we'd been the day before with Aimee and Eleanor. We stayed until it was almost dark and then we went to the supermarket to do the shopping. We went to Rachel's (because she has an oven) and cooked Macaroni Cheese. We bought Pastis to try as it is the local drink of Marseille. It was disgusting, they can keep it! We then went to Le Vieux Port to Exit and to Le Bar de la Marine where Love Actually was filmed.
Tuesday. We had to go back to Rachel's to do the washing up because we'd left it the night before. Now I know why I always do the washing up before I go to bed. There is nothing more depressing than going into the kitchen to find yesterday's washing up. After the washing up we went to the beach. It was really cold and windy. The waves were really impressive and there was lots of people windsurfing. We ate at Patacrepes and went to Parc Borely. In the afternoon we went to Le Palais Longchamps and then returned home on the tram. That meant that we had used the bus, tram and metro. We later went to the supermarket and did more shopping. We cooked burgers for tea. Vegetarian ones for me of course! We then went to watch the football. OM were playing Metz and there was extra time and penalties. Eventually Marseille won as Metz missed their fifth and final penalty.
Wednesday. Saint Charles. We went to buy Alex's return train ticket and mine and Rachel's carte 12-25. We queued for about half and hour. There was a really really rude man behind us in the queue who could not have stood any closer to us if he were to have tried. Argh! He seemed quite shocked when I answered his question in French, ha! Yes, I can speak french! I am not just some rude ignorant English person as you are a rude ignorant French person. After we'd got our cartes we walked down Rue Saint Fe to La Prefecture for lunch. The service was awful, the lady was bordering on rude, she just seemed to ignore us even though it was obvious we had finished eating and therefore would like our plates cleared away. And surely standing there, money in hand is enough of a clue for 'l'addition s'il vous plait' even though we had already tried to ask for it several times. Argh! What is wrong with people?! We went home after this and cooked cous cous stuffed peppers. Angeline then came round with some dvd's because we had tried and failed to find the video store. None of us realised we could just have gone to the library to borrow a dvd... oh well. We sat and watched Ratatouille - brillian film. Almost made me like rats... but not quite! We then had chocolate ice cream and watched a second film - Momento but I have to admit I did fall asleep towards the end. I wasn't the only one though! After our movie evening I went for a shower and then 'Gill, would you like to watch Scrubs?' 'Yeah, I'll just be a minute' was my reply, I then got sidetracked doing the washing up and well, by the time I'd finished Scrubs was finished, oh well... at least the washing up got done.
Thursday. The week is flying. Alex went back to Chambery today. We took him to the station for his train at 11h30, it was sad that he had to go. After he'd gone we went back home and had soup and bread for lunch. The appartment was so quiet! We then went to meet Louise and Mairead at Le Vieux Port and John and Dan were there too. After we went to Monoprix and I bought the french equivalent of a scrap book. We then came home and Angeline came round to lend me her camera because mine seems to have broken. It looks like my Insurance with Ensleigh might come in use... After Angeline had left, me and Rachel made the burgers again and we are now packing because tomorrow we are going to Nice. The train leaves at 11h54. We're staying in a hotel as it was pretty much the same price as a hostel and the location is really good. Anyway, I'll keep you posted.
