Day 14 (Marseille)

We really got out today! Waking up very sleepy-eyed, we headed to the train station at 7:00 AM to take a train to Marseille. It was a 1 1/2 train ride, I spent most of it listening to my audiobook and laughing at Dr. Mehta as he took funny pictures of all the girls sleeping in their seats. When we got to Marseille there was a bit of confusion as we tried to make it out of the train station simply because the place is huge. When we finally made it out, the view was absolutely amazing. If the station is huge, it's nothing compared to the city. Looking out over it reminded me of some of the breath taking veiws I saw when I went to Athens. We made our way down to the old port, which was filled with fishing and sail boats. They were selling fresh fish out on the sidewalk, some of them I had no idea what they were!! From there we hopped onto a ferry to go visit the dreaded Chateau d'If (made famous by Alexander Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo). The prison was very impressive and well preserved but I was a little disappointed. There wasn't that much information available about the castle not even the more famous cells such as the one Abbe Faria or Edmond Dantes stayed in. I felt like the site relied a little too much on the book and movies for it's fame, in several of the cells various versions of the movies were playing. Additionally, I'm getting a little frustrated about the way the French present information: everything is writen in French!!! Though I have a decent grasp of the French language, I can't really pick up on the sutle nuances and vocabularly that is history, so half the time I feel like I walk into a room and say "well isn't this pretty/interesting/spooky" and walk out without really taking anything away from it. That being said the prison was still impressive and the view of the coast was fantastic. After getting back on shore, we stopped for a quick 30 minute lunch and then headed out for a petit train (a mini train ride around the city). Now we get to another one of my frustrations about France: misinformation. We had tickets bought through the tourism office for the mini train that would take us up to Notre Dame du Gard. There were two train curcuits, one which would take us around Old Marseille and the other to Notre Dame, so I asked the lady (in French) which train we should get on for our ticket. She responded that it didn't matter, so we jumped on the train that was more empty so that we could all sit together. About 3 minutes after the train left, I realized that we were on the wrong one. It was terribly frustrating. But it ended up being not so bad, the trip through Old Marseille was nice. We got to see the Cathedral (some times known as the Pajama Cathedral because of it's design) and the Viellle Charite (which was build in the 17th century to house the homeless, ill, and orpanded. Inside the Vielle Charite, was a beautiful piece of art. It was so simple: two dresses hanging on a wire with four fans at their base which made them appear to be dancing. It was absolutely ingenious. Afterwards, our group split up. Tia, Felicia, and Lauren went to the Fashion Museum while me, Mollie, and Miles took the (correct!) train to go see Notre Dame. The Cathedral was unbelievable. You could see it from the coast ontop of the mountrain and it looked so small but when you got up close, it was actually pretty big. The outside was aweinspiring and the inside was so intricate and delicate. The mosaics were down right stunning. And the view! From the Cathedral you could see the whole city, it was quite spectacular. The ride back down was a little scary. This little train was zipping down these steep narrow roads. I unintentionally slept most of the ride back to Isle sur la Sorge, Lyle woke me up just before we got to our stop. We ended the day with a group of us heading to Isabella's, which is a fantastic little icecream shop that sells the most amazingly displayed icecreams. I got a scoop of coffee icecream topped off with white chocolate syrup, it was delicious. Today was one of the best days we've had so far.