The South of France – Marseille, Nice, Villefranche-sur-Mer, Monaco, Avignon and Orange

Wednesday: I woke up early in the morning, finished packing my bag and printing out some information, ate a quick breakfast and left for Part-Dieu. We had to print out some of our tickets at the train station, but the train arrived on time and everything went off without a hitch (a surprise given how much I trust the French train system). The ride was just under two hours and I slept almost the whole time, so it passed by pretty quickly. Dana and I arrived in Marseille and Dana’s grandmother’s cousin Martine was waiting at the train station to pick us up. She took us in her car back to her apartment (just a few blocks from the old port) and then had to run to head to work. Dana and I ate some of the food that she left for us, organized our stuff and headed out for the day. We had seen an ice cream shop on our way in the car and tried to find it, but were unsuccessful, so we just headed down to the old port. We got down there and took a small ferry to an island nearby where there is the Chateau d’If which served as a fortress and later as a prison for a long time (kind of like Alcatraz since it is on an island isolated from the mainland). It is famous for being one of the settings of Alexandre Dumas' adventure novel The Count of Monte Cristo. The views from the island were simply stunning and the waters in the bay were so incredibly blue and clear. Dana and I really wanted to just hop in! We explored the Chateau. There was a really cool place at the top of the Chateau where if you stood directly in the center, your voice echoed/reverberated in this really interesting way. We also caught the end of a tour about the Chateau so we got to learn a little more about the history. After that, we headed back down the hill to take the ferry back to the mainland. We had to pass by another island on the way, but it was quite enjoyable because we were outside in the beautiful sunshine overlooking magnificent landscapes. Once we got back, we headed back to the apartment to meet up with Martine. On the way back, we ended up finding the ice cream shop that we had been searching for, but it wasn’t going to re-open back up after lunch until 3:00pm. We waited outside for 10 minutes hoping it would open, but it didn’t so we gave up. After meeting up with Martine, we headed back out to the Panier. We headed down to the old port and were able to take a free little boat/shuttle across the bay to the other side that is organized by the town. It was really convenient and it is cool because the boat runs on electric power. The Panier is a part of the city that to me resembled the Croix-Rousse in Lyon. It is a place that used to be made up mostly of workers and immigrants, but it has become more chic recently because of the interesting architecture. While walking around, we saw this man in the middle of constructing this incredibly intricate paper mache on the walls of a few buildings. He explained to us all about his process and the importance of public art. He was a really fascinating guy. After that, we headed over to the old hospice of Marseille and saw this awesome little chapel in the middle of it. It was very simple in terms of decoration, but the architecture was really interesting. There were all this little tiny areas and the dome was actually in the shape of an oval rather than a circle, which I have never seen. After that, we walked around a little bit more and then headed back to the apartment to pick up the car. Martine took us up to Notre-Dame de la Garde on the very top of an enormous hill overlooking all of Marseille. There was a 360 degree view of Marseille as we walked around the church. It is an important pilgrimage site, even for people from Marseille. The basilica is not that big inside, but it was one of the most awesome churches that I have seen in terms of the interior. It was ornate, but in a really unique way. It wasn’t the same gothic or baroque styles that we’ve seen a lot of in Europe. There were even wood boats hanging all over the church to show the importance of Marseille as a major port. The views of Marseille and the Mediterranean were simply stunning. Honestly, none of the pictures I took can even begin to do it justice. After that, we headed back down the hill and Martine drove us around to show us various different neighborhoods of Marseille (which is, in terms of the city itself, the second largest city in France). Then, we headed down to see the beach and some little areas that looked like little fishing villages on the side of the sea. We even saw some places on the sea that used to be used to store fish before bringing it to market, that are now used as houses. After a lovely adventure, we headed back to the apartment. Another cousin of Dana’s who lives in Aix en Provence came to the house to have dinner with us. We sat out on Martine’s lovely terrace to have some appetizers. Anne was a really interesting women. Her husband is Irish and she has two high school age kids. Her English was really good and we had a great time talking about various education systems, the problems with the US’s restrictions on alcohol, etc. After that, we had a delicious dinner. We had couscous with vegetables in an incredible sauce and roasted chicken, that was so moist it just fell off the bone. I was very happy to have all those fresh-cooked vegetables without all the extra cream or cheese that my host my always adds (I like it, its just really fatty and heavy, so its really nice when I have things that are a little lighter). For dessert, we had strawberries and ice cream that we had gotten from the shop on the way back to the apartment. It was a great dinner with great company. Dana’s cousins are so nice and we had a really great time with Martine all day and at dinner with Anne.

Thursday: Dana and I needed to wake up early Thursday morning for our train to Nice, however, we really struggled to get up since we had gone to sleep pretty late the night before. We scrambled to get dressed, get our stuff together and have a little breakfast before Martine drove us to the train station. We made it on time and it all worked out just fine. We got on the train to Nice and it was an easy two and a half hour ride since I slept for most of the trip. Once we got to Nice, we got off the train and easily found the tramway. We had to buy some stuff at a little store nearby to get some change to buy metro tickets. We took the tram a few stops to Rue de l’hotel des postes and walked a couple of blocks. We easily found our Hotel (Wilson) and headed upstairs to check in. We had a relatively small bed and had to share the toilets with the whole floor of people, but it was a great price, right in the center of the city and then people running it were really helpful at providing information about where to go and what to do for the day. We dropped our stuff off and headed out to get some lunch in old Nice. We had some great pizzas for lunch right next to the marché aux fleurs at this place that was recommended to us called La Faviola. We got to sit outside and it was sunny out, so it was a really relaxing lunch. After lunch, we walked through the marché aux fleurs and enjoyed the beautiful flowers. Next, we walked over to the Promenade des Anglais to see the famous pebble beaches of Nice. There was beautiful sunshine and the water from the Mediterranean was so incredibly blue. After strolling along the beach and and taking in the ocean, we headed over to the Palais de Lascaris, which is an impressive aristocratic residence built for Jean-Baptiste Lascaris-Vintimille. It houses a large collection old pianos and other musical instruments.

On the ground floor there is an apothecary dating back to 1738, from there, you follow a magnificent staircase that leads to the upstairs bed chambers, adorned with frescos and other Flemish tapestries. It was small and you could easily miss it while walking down the street, but it was pretty impressive once we were inside. After that, we walked around old Nice a little bit more, we found this really gorgeous church in one of the squares we walked into. After we had done some touring around, we headed over to the stairs along the water to climb up to the Colline du Chateau up on the hill overlooking Nice. The views of the town and the water below were incredible and the place itself was pretty impressive. We explored some of the ruins and saw this great little waterfall that was really refreshing because it was pretty warm when the sun was fully out. On our walk back down we saw some guys playing pétanque, so we decided to watch them, however, instead we ended up watching their dogs who were running around barking at each other and swinging enormous sticks around (almost at each other) with their mouths. It ended up being pretty entertaining. Once we were back down to the bottom of the hill, we walked through old Nice for a bit more and then decided that we were pretty thirsty. We found this fabulous fresh juice/smoothie place that made fresh fruit smoothies with just fruit and ice. I had one with apples, pineapple, strawberries and passion fruit that was incredibly delicious. We sat down at the tables outside of the little place to drink our juice, but it was in the shade and so a little bit cold, so we decided to walk out to the main area where there was more sun. However, we wanted to sit down and the only seats were from various restaurants and since we didn’t want to buy anything else from other places, I decided that we should just sit down in the middle of the square on the floor to drink our juices in the sun. While we were sitting there, a couple girls came over to us and started talking to us and asking us where we were from. We talked to them for a bit and then they asked us why we were sitting on the group in the square. We explained the situation and then went back to their family sitting right near us to report what they had learned. It was a pretty funny experience. After we enjoyed our drinks, we headed back to our hotel room. On the way, I saw and art store and I have been looking for black paper to use to mount my photos for my photo project, but haven’t found what I was looking for in Lyon, so we decided to go inside and see if we could find what I needed. They ended up having what I needed, but they had to cut the paper to the right size. While we were waiting, we ended up talking to this man and women (who I think work in the store….) for about 10-15 minutes about the United States and American movies and tv series. It was really an enjoyable conversation and the store was really cute. Once I got what I needed, we walked back over to the hotel so that we could change into our bathing suits to go to the beach. We decided to go later in the day when it would be less sunny since Dana is really fair-skinned and burns super easily. We walked back over to the beach and right on the boardwalk, I found this artist selling these beautiful original paintings of Nice that I ended up buying. The colors were beautiful and it will be a great memory of Nice (and we got it for a great price!). We ended up talking with the artist for a while. It was really nice to be able to meet and talk with the artist of the painting that I bought. Dana and I then headed down to the beach. The beach in Nice is a topless beach and Dana and I, being adventurous decided that going topless on a beach in France was an experience that we had to try. We just decided to own it and even though the beach was almost empty (since it was 7pm), and it wasn’t littered with topless bathers like earlier in the day, we had a good laugh and it will definitely we a story to tell. After that, we headed back to the hotel to change our clothes and head over to dinner. We had found this little Japanese-French fusion place called Ma Yucca on trip advisor and were excited to check it out. We were a little worried at first because there wasn’t much choice on the menu, but the meal turned out to be absolutely delicious. First they brought over this little complimentary salmon/tofu thing with a yogurt-chive sauce that was really great. After that, Dana and I shared this tempura chicken dish, melt-in your mouth good pan-fried entrecote steak a with vegetables, mashed potatoes, mashed butternut squash and rice. It was a lovely meal, but it was relatively light compared to the rich, filling meals that our host families serve. After dinner, we walked back across town to old Nice to go to this amazing ice cream shop that we had found earlier in the day. This place had 101 flavors (yes, I counted…) and included some pretty bizarre ones. However, they wouldn’t let us try anything, so I decided to play it safe. I had some fantastic pistachio and hazelnut ice cream. Dana and I went to sit in a cute little square to eat our ice cream and talk before heading back to our hotel to hang out and do some planning for Friday in Monaco.

   

Friday: Friday morning we got up and got ready for the day and headed out to find the #100 bus to take to Villefranche-sur-Mer. It was an easy 15 minute ride to Villefranche-sur-Mer and once we got off the bus, the office of tourism, was right next to the bus stop so we were easily able to grab a map of the little town. We wandered down through the little streets in the old part of the city and along the water we found a cute little market. They had really nice stuff, but it was pretty expensive. We ended up talking to this one artist for a while and he told us that she has a lot of American tourists who buy stuff from her and they just ship the stuff to the states without even taking a receipt. She was so shocked by this and just felt that she had to explain this to us. After that, we walked back up through the streets to grab a little croissant and see the Cathedral in Villefranche. It was very pretty on the inside, but what I really enjoyed was the brightly colored façade. After that, we walked back down to the citadel which was a fortress built in 1557 on the orders of Emmanuel-Philibert (Duke of Savoy) to defend the town. The citadel houses the Volti Museum (really interesting bronze and copper female figure statues), the Goetz-Boumeester Museum (full of interesting surrealism paintings) and the Roux Collection (hundreds of figurines representing the life of people in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance). The building itself was really remarkable and the museums were quite interesting. Once we finished at the citadel, we headed back up the hill to take the bus to Monaco. We continued our beautiful bus ride along the coast. After a while, Dana thought that she saw a sign welcoming us to Monaco. We thought we knew where we were on the map, but unfortunately, once we got off the bus and asked at a nearby restaurant, we learned that we were still in Monaco and not at all yet where we needed to go. So, we walked back to the bus station to wait for the next bus to take us all the way to Monaco. Once we got there, we got off in Condamine (one of the 10 wards of Monaco). We got off at right in front of the starting point of the grand prix. From there, we walked around to find the restaurant that we were going to for lunch called the Explorer’s Pub. They had this great menu of the day, however, the main dish had pork in it and they couldn’t substitute anything, so I ended up getting what I thought was a Caesar salad, however, it really in no way resembled a Caesar salad. When it came out it was TINY (and pretty expensive) and it had calamari, a sweet and sour like dressing and gingerbread croutons. It was ok, but I was still pretty hungry after lunch. After that, we walked up the big hill on the way to the Monaco Casino. On the way we found this market full of incredibly beautiful flowers and some weird random other stuff. We couldn’t find the entrance, so we ended up sneaking into it past a barricade. Afterwards, we couldn’t find an exit that wasn’t barricaded, so we had to sneak back out. Once we snuck back out, we realized that it might have been the type of market that you had to pay to go into (it was pretty swanky…), but oh well. After that, we went to see the Casino (in Monte Carlo). We tried to go in just to the entryway to see inside (because otherwise you have to pay to go inside), but the guard kept yelling at us to go to the coat room. We just kept standing there because we couldn’t understand why we had to go to the coat room since we didn’t have any coats. Eventually, I tried to take a picture and he finally explained that I had to check my camera at the coat check, so we just left. From there, we tried to walk to Avenue Princess Grace (in Larvotto). However, we struggled a bit with the map because the street layout was pretty confusing because of the hills. We eventually found it and sat on the side of the beach overlooking the water for a while. Then we walked down the avenue hoping to found the fancy shops that we had heard about, but it was a disappointment. On our way back, we say the National Museum of Monaco and saw that it was free for students, so we decided to check it out. It ended up being about Grace Kelly, but it was tiny and the only things we learned were that Grace Kelly liked Pringle cashmere sweaters (from Scotland) and that she liked gardens. The one cool things was there use of ipads to show pictures in one of the rooms. It ended up being a pretty boring museum, but we didn’t pay, so it was fine. Next door to the museum was a bus stop, so we took the city bus from Larvotto over to Le Rocher. Once there, we climbed up to see the Palais Princier. The rooms inside the palace were simply magnificent with all the details and the vibrant colors. I took some great pictures inside (against the rules as usual). There was a really interesting audioguide that was provided with admission and we learned about some of the Grimaldi’s history since the 13^th century when they started ruling over Monaco. I really want to read up some more about the history because it seems really interesting. After that, we walked a few blocks to go see the Monaco’s Saint Nicholas Cathedral. It was relatively modern because it dated from the late 19^th century. After that, we walked back down the hill and decided to go check out the exotic gardens on the very very top of the next hill over (in Moneghetti). We were trying to navigate our way up there using our map, but it ended up being quite complicated. We asked a guy on the street to help us and he gave us great directions. We had to walk up many flights of stairs and take 3 different elevators to get to the top. Once there we had to walk about a tenth of a mile to the gardens. However, by the time we got up there, we found out that the gardens had already closed. We walked back down the hill through a really pretty park: Princess Antoinette Park. Once at the bottom, we were walking over to place d’armes to take the bus back to Nice and we saw it pulling up to the stop down below. We made a mad dash for it and fortunately caught the bus. It was a nice drive back to Nice and the bus was a lot less crowded which was quite nice. Once we got back, we dropped our stuff off at our hotel and went back down to go find a restaurant to eat at. We had originally planned on staying in Monaco to eat dinner, but we found out that the buses stopped running at 9pm and we didn’t want to be stressed out about the time, so it made sense to go back to Nice to eat dinner. We walked down the same street as the one where we had had dinner the night before and found a little Chinese place to eat at. The food was good but not great. But at least it was much cheaper than the food in Monaco. After dinner, we walked back to Old Nice and found a new little gelato place that had been recommended to us called Crema di Gelato. I had a delicious kids size cone of pistachio gelato and it was delicious. After that, we headed back to our hotel and did a little bit of packing and planning before going to bed.

Saturday: Saturday morning we had to wake up very early to take a train from Nice to Avignon (through Marseille). We had a 7h27 train and got into Avgignon at 11h11. Once we got there, Dana’s pen pal Juliette and her boyfriend met up with us at the train station. They took us directly into Avignon. We walked around and saw the famous Avignon bridge. After that, we walked into the actual walled city. We did a little exploring and then we found a little restaurant to have lunch. After lunch, Dana and I really wanted to see the Papal Palace, but it was a little costly so Juliette and her boyfriend went to hang out while we went inside. It was really fascinating. Avignon served as the home for 7 popes between 1309-1376. Following that, Avignon remained important without the Catholic Church for some time. It was really a fascinating history. After that, we got back in the car and headed to Orange (a Provençal town about 45 minutes from Avignon), where Juliette lives with her family. Orange is famous for the Roman  Theatre that is said to be the most impressive one still existing in Europe. It is still in use for many performances throughout the year. It is also famous for its Triumphal Arch that was likely first built during the reign of Augustus (63 BC – 14 AD). It was a really cute little town and it was incredible how much history we saw during the day. After that, we went back to Juliette’s house. On our way we drove through some beautiful countryside full of grape vines. Once we got there, we met her parents and twin little sisters. Their cat had just had kittens about 2 weeks before and so we ended up playing with the little kittens for hours. I am allergic to cats, but I took a bunch of allergy medicine and decided to deal with the consequences since the little kittens were so unbelievably adorable! While playing with the kittens, we watched this home makeover show on tv. I was really pleased that I really understood everything that was going on without even really having to focus that hard. I am really impressed with how much my comprehension has improved! Eventually, it was time for dinner. We had a low-key dinner with her family and a lovely homemade apple tart for dessert. After dinner, Juliette’s friend and her friend’s boyfriend came over to hang out. Since we were in Provence, when her friends came in, they gave us three kisses on the cheek rather than two, which really threw Dana for a loop! Her friend has been studying English and came over with the goal of speaking English with us, but chickened out, so we spent most of the night speaking in French (good practice for us anyways). Finally it was late and we all said goodnight and went to bed since we had to get up early the next morning.