Marseille Gare

Marseille is a really cool place. Very busy, very multicultural, dynamic, a lot of history (that is very visible in the architecture), and quite naturally beautiful. I'm at the Gare right now waiting for my train home and -- marvel of technologies -- writing this on my phone. Marseille is exciting with people everywhere and a very clear cultural imprint from being closer to north Africa than to Paris (I'm pretty sure that's accurate..).. One interesting thing is that there are a ton of people here who don't seem to work. I mean, you see this everywhere to an extent but here in the city centre all the bars/cafes are filled all day long with people -- young and old -- sitting around drinking coffee. What a life...

The coolest thing happened yesterday. Around Marseille there are these "Calanques". I guess they're basically fjords and they're an amazing geographical phenomenon. I guess in essence they're like rocky small mountains that start near the coast and then on the other side the water has cut large inlets into them. I'm likely totally off with the terminology but whatever.. There's a picture on this post of the one we went to. Anyways, there are a number of them and each are different in their own way with respect to ease of access, beauty, activity (swimming, hiking, etc). So we went to one by taking the metro then the bus then about a 2 hour walk. But we wore flip flops (duh) so it was tough.. It was definite hiking territory. Anyways, we got down to the water, had a drink and then needed to take the long arduous journey back. We started walking way up up up and finally (not yet even probably 25% of the way there) had to take a rest on a rock. Cars are allowed to go down there and we'd seen lots of people trying to hitch hike out of there without much success. But after sitting down for about 1 minute, the very next car slowed down and offered us a ride. It was a couple and their little girl so seemed pretty safe (though at that point I likely would have gotten in any car).. Not only did they drive us over the mountain but all the way to the bus stop then they saw that the bus was coming so drove past it to the next stop so we wouldn't miss the bus. We got back to the hotel at about 6 whereas if we'd just walked out of there it probably would have been 8 or so before even making it to the bus stop. And they talked to us about how they were about to take a 3 week trip to Canada where they had rented a camper van to go across the country. Cool stuff.