Marseille - February 20th

Today was a very exciting day for me, I left a gloomy Lyon from "La Gare Part-Dieu" at 8am via TGV and arrived in a Sunny, Warm Marseille at 10am. Along the way I spoke to, apparently a well known, British radio anouncer (which I forget the name). Quite an interesting conversation about how music is selected to be played on the airwaves and what factors come under consideration when rating top 10 songs of the week... etc ... etc...

Anyways, the first sight you see when exiting the train station in Marseille is a descent of about 75 stairs to street level... you can't help but think that's going to be fun to march back up later...(Eh Dave? Don't worry folks that story will be in the next blog...)

So the first thing I did was make my way to the hotel which is about a 5 minute walk from the train station and about 10 minute walk from the old port... ideal location and good price. The room wasn't ready yet so I left my backpack at the reception and went skateboarding around Marseille! The streets aren't as good as Lyon for skateboarding, especially the Main street, which was under heavy construction... I guess that's what you get when you go in the winter...

I eventually made my way to the old port and observed the fish market in action... Marseille is known to be a Port city. The old port holds so many boats that the poles holding up the sails almost form a solid wall when trying to look to the other side of the port. Futhermore, the old port seems to be the touristic center of Marseille, so needless to say how beautiful my surrounding were.

Around 1pm I sat on a bench and bathed in a cloudless sky. It was easily 20Celsius if not more in the afternoon. Really, perferct weather! Although I've made the following observation countless times, I don't recall writing it on the blog; Imagine It's 20Celcius, I'm in a T-Shirt and people around me are in fur coats and scarfs... You can imagine how I stand out sometimes... I seriously don't understand how they can be so cold in 20Celsius... I guess it's Canadian Blood...

Around 3pm I went back to the hotel and took a nap... I think the fact that I hardly slept the previous night allowed the sun to drain the little energy that I had left... SO around 7pm I went to a terrasse not too far from the hotel and did l'Apero until 7pm.

Now I would like to welcome 2 star guests to this Blog!! I met Dave and Christianne, arriving from Paris, at the train station around 8pm and we made our way to their hotel. It was great to meet up with friends from Montreal, becase although i've made great friends in the 5 weeks i've been in France, nothing beats the friends you've known for years. Along the way Christianne told me quite a funny story about their quest to making the TGV on time in Paris (I'll let Dave explain in his blog)...

Dave and Christianne's hotel was right on the old port, even better location than mine.. They had a superb view outside their balcony.... truly stunning. We eventually went to eat super at a little cozy restaurent which served pretty much everything... I had a great meal for 12 Euros... A Bargan really... And of course we had a bottle of wine... "Cote de Provence 2006" not bad.

So we talked and talked in English (refreshing), laughed and had ourselves a memorable little night. After the meal we went back to our respective hotels with plans to meet up tomorow morning, and really start visiting the city.