Above - the ghetto that is MarseilleWe got up on Monday morning at 8am and packed. We went to return the broken cork screw but it turns out that french supermarkets don't give you your money back, you have to exchange. The woman didn't even seem that surprised it was broken, I did wonder whether they would take it back with the cork still attatched. We had tried and tried but could not for the life of us remove the cork from the cork screw - removing the cork and corkscrew from the bottle had been hard enough! We exchanged it for a different bottle opener as Rachel needed one chez elle anyway and I got a garlic press as I am fed up with mashing it with a fork. We went back to the hotel and got our things. We then paid and left. We walked back to the station, each of us with a carrier bag more than we'd come with what with everything we'd bought and then the hot chocolate, strawberry jam and sugar we didn't want to leave behind. We bought tickets at the station and got the 11h12 train back to Marseille. Nearly three hours later we were pulling into Gare Saint Charles and I began to see what Alex meant when he had text me to say 'We are just pulling in now to the ghetto that is Marseille'. There is graffiti everywhere, it looks dirty and messy and well, pretty drab really. We got off the train and headed for the metro where my metro card wouldn't work because a month had passed so I had to recharge it. We then took the metro one stop to Colbert and walked along La Rue de la Republique picking up a baguette en route and then through Le Passage Lorette before returning chez moi for a well earnt cup of tea and some lunch. I think if that is your first impression of Marseille then you can be forgiven for having mistaken it for a ghetto! After Nice and Monaco it was dirty, messy, run down, drab, pretty depressing really!
