Our short time in France, Marseille

M We took a TGV, high speed train to Marsielle and wow are they fast! We spent 3 days in Marsielle, it was great to not have to wear a hat and gloves, although it was extremely windy outside, and far from warm. So windy in fact, that the boat tour to the Isle of D'if was not running the entire time we were there. :( This island is where the famous story of The Count of Monty Cristo took place, we did get to see the island from afar though, after a short trip to the top of a hill/mountain.

the church itself, you can see all the surroundingMarseille is a wonderful place to just walk around. There is the old port full of fishing and sail boats as well as cruise ships, churchs, and other great European arcitecture. We climbed to the top of some ancient castle (Fort Saint-Nicolas) and of course Notre Dame de la Garde, a beautiful church on top of a huge hill/mountain that has a statue of Mary and baby Jesus, which looks gold, probably plated gold Jesse tells me. The view from the site is more impressive then mountains around Marsielle, the port, and the edges of the city with everything in-between. It was nice to be in a country where I understood some of the language, although I realized that my high-school French classes were a long time ago, and my French needed a lot of work.

J We also enjoyed visiting Vielle Charite which was an impressive building built for beggers as they were too many of them hanging out at churchs. It now houses a few mesuems which had some interesting artifacts, African and Mediterranian art, masks, oh and a huge section devoted to Egyption artifacts, almost as impressive as the museum in Berlin. We were told after taking about 50 pictures "no fotos", so we agreed and laughed at the fact they didn't bother to put up a sign. Luckily they didn't confiscate my amatuer photos (we've heard from Julie and Cory that some places in Rome will do that if you dare take pictures).

Warning, incoming rant...
As I write this, I've been thinking about the whole "no photo" phenomenon. My best guess is that most places don't want you to take pictures because they hope to sell you postcards in their gift shops at the end of the museum. I realize the need to stop people from using flashes as it bleaches over time, but when they forbid you from taking amatuer photos with no flash, it angers me. Especially when I pay so much to enter a building, not to mention I have a terrible memory so the need to have something to look back on is more important for me then some people.

Recently in a building we entered we ran into some stone columns that were 400-700 years old, of course as soon as I got ready to take a picture I was told "no photos". Even if I had used a flash (and yes some people don't understand enough about how to use their cameras to disable a flash, in which case they shouldn't be allowed to operate a camera in my opinion) on these crumbling stone columns which barely had its original structure in-tact, there was no paint left to bleach.

In closing, I laugh at these museum people who think that they can control the "no foto" situation by posting people in every room to guard those would-be photo takers because in a few years the cameras we carry are going to be so small, so inconspicious, that everyone will be recording (digitally) everywhere they go. Plus it frustrates me to no end when I obey the rules and then the guy behind me sneaks photos all the way along. Oh well, mental photos last, for awhile anyway.

M So back to what we did in Marseille. We did go into another Jewish memorial museum, but it was all in French. We have noticed that in France most things are in just French compared to most European countries which have at least English and often other languages. Due to the constant rain and/or extreme wind we did spend some time in the mall warming up and looking around. We followed a walking path on the map which was very difficult, but brought us to many really cool buildings. One evening we bought some French wine (for 3 Euros) and a baggette and had a nice French meal.

We had planned to stay for a fourth night, when we went to the train station to get our tickets for the train the next day. We were surprised to find that the only train going to Venice was an overnight train that went daily. We were very lucky that our hostel let us cancel that night and we quickly packed up our things and got ready to go. The train was actually more expensive than most hostels that we have stayed in ($105 for couchette), and that is with the Eurorail pass discount. We have heard we need to pay extra for overnight trains, but wow it was a lot. We were also worried as we have been warned never to take an over night train in Italy due to high crime rates, but we had no choice. We will pray and see what happens.