and nothing got stolen

So Marseille was a bit of a last minute decision. The flights were cheap so we booked it. Just Luke , Rachel and I went which was a bit of a different dynamic but not a bad one!
We arrived at the airport around 1pm and took the shuttle into the town. The historic/ tourist area is centered around the old port and luckily our hostel was only about a 10 minute walk from the water. We were also on the seventh floor of the building so there definitely wasn't going to be anyone climbing in our window! For those of you who hadn't heard one of the other interns got her whole backpack stolen in marseille. The thief apparently broke into the room they were in through a window while they whole group was in the room sleeping! Shitty luck for sure. Anyway, our hostel was simple but nice and clean! This is a view from our window....

We wandered around the town on the on the first day. Grabbed food, enjoyed the port and walked up to an old church. There was a festival called "la fete blue" happening in town that weekend (lucky for us!) which was focused on the performing arts ie dance, music, ect.... The first day we saw this terrific interpretive dance troupe. The stage that they set up was right on the old port with Notre DAme de la Garde in the background with all the port lights. It was gorgeous.

Ps. Notre Dame de la Garde is the really big church perched on a huge hill in marseille. Apparently that was where fishermen would go to get their boats blessed. It was hugely touristy when we went to see it on saturday there were people EVERYWHERE. And it was really windy so we were having trouble keeping our skirts down. I think Luke was fairly impressed with the church itself but i got this relly cluttered vibe because there was slightly touristy artifacts all over the place. It did have a gorgeous ceiling though!

On our fist full day we headed out to the islands off the coast on a tour boat. The first one we stopped at was called le Chateau D'If which is the set of the prison in the Count of Monty Cristo. It was neat. Barren and hot but absolutely beautiful. Next we headed to Frioul which was an island that actually had some kind of population... We wandered around and found a cute little inlet beach that we stayed at for a while then we walked up the hill to some sort of fort, Fort Ratonneau which was abbandonned by everyone except the seagulls... The picture of what looks like rudimentary crossed is an unfinished ammunitions shelter dating from the second world.

After the islands we got some food at a lebanese place called Habib's which was a little ways from the port center. It was so delicious and "economical " that we ended up eating there every night... After dinner we headed down the coast on the bus to visit the beaches where they were having an extrem sports tournament as well as a beach rugby tournament and some sort of sea swim race. We sat on the beach watching very talented french soccer players juggle to music while skydivers fell down into the sunset and came in to land directly over top of us and then skidded down onto the beach.

Day two took us up to Norte DAme de la Garde as mentioned and then we headed over to the Marseille city museum. It turns out Marseille is ancient, lots and lots of history taken place along those shores.... We headed back to the beach tournament for a little while in the afternoon just in time to catch one last skateboarding "session" and then when we got back to the port we were in time to see a dance troupe that was more like stomp the yard followed by a sweet rockish band which i really don't think the french appreciated. we were ths only ones dancing. Then the french reggae came up and last but not least the french boyband : the Starliners. ha now there were 12 year-olds dancing too... But on the third day we firgured out what it is the french like to dance to. eurotechno. surprise, hah. They had a huge street party with a bunch of different guest djs.

We also took a bus up to the Calanques on the last day. It was a bit if a hike but you wind your way down the mountains into these naturaly protected coves. The water was quite cold but absolutely beautiful and since all the locals were cliff jumping, we did a little of that too!


All in all, we saw a ton of stuff. Luck was definitly on our side that weeknd!