marseille

Donde estas, ahora

Jacob Redding — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 12:43:00 +0000

Last saturday Jenson and I left Marseille at 1am. We took a night train from Marseille to Barcelona and arrived in Barcelona at 9:30am. Fortunately we purchased a sleeper car so we were well rested for the day. After arriving in Barcelona we purchased tickets from Barcelona to Madrid(34 euros)and Madrid to Salamanca(14 euros), the train?to Madrid left at 10pm that evening. That left us 12 hours in Barcelona.

We grabbed a tourist map of Barcelona and set out on foot to see as many sites as we could in the 12 hour period. We walked about 8 miles that day and saw a very large chunk of Barcelona. I?ll upload the pictures as soon as I can. Barcelona is a very nice town but I wouldn?t want to stay there for very long, much too touristy for me.

At 10pm we caught the train to Barcelona and arrived in Madrid at 7am, the next train to Salamanca arrived at 8:45 am and arrived at 12:00. We were picked up at the train station by the manager of the apartment we were renting, which we rented through the school. The apartment is absolutely amazing. It is old and things are nowhere near modern but, as this is huge, the view from our balcony is absolutely amazing. It is honestly just like a postcard. I?ll upload pictures as soon as I can.. but just trust me, it is amazing.

Ok I have to get, I don?t want to be on a computer on a day like this (27-28 degrees).

Pictures

Jacob Redding — Fri, 02 Jul 2004 11:21:00 +0000

I uploaded a bunch of pictures today, Paris, Normandy, Marseille and all of the little side trips that I have been taking along the way are now up on the site.
I also uploaded the pictures from my graduation party

Click here for pictures of Europe
Click here for pictures from the graduation party
And click here for the sexiest picture you'll ever see

Onshore winds

Jacob Redding — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 13:21:00 +0000

OK so here's the deal, I have a ton of journal entries to write up but school is keeping me pretty busy so I haven't had the opportunity to type them up, additionally I have pretty limited access to a computer. I will get to them however. I still have my trip to Paris and the flight down to Marseille to write about not to mention the entire first week of classes. I will get to them as soon as possible, maybe I'll go to an internet cafe.

What I do want to write about right now is surfing. When I arrived on Sunday Jenson was already in Marseille and was waiting for us. When the plane touched down he told me exactly what I had suspected. People did surf in Marseille. I have been talking about surfing in Marseille for months but everyone thought I was crazy. After all does the Mediterrean have waves? YES!!! it does, they are very small but gosh-dangit they are rideable.

The problem is that they are not consistent, last sunday the sea was producing some decent waves due to heavy winds out to sea. Unfortunately for me this entire week the wind has died down and the waves are not been produced. Freakin' eh, I just want to surf one small meditterean wave.

So everyday I'm checking the buoy and wind reports, one of these something is going to happen. I just know it ;)

Marseille

Jacob Redding — Sun, 20 Jun 2004 10:05:00 +0000

On Sunday Amanda and I took the train out to the Orly airport in Paris to catch an Easyjet flight to Marseille. Easyjet is this really great airline that flys around Europe for very low prices. The flight from Paris to Marseille for approximately 22 euros or just over $30, super cheap.

The flight only took about one hour or so but I slept the whole way so for me it only took about 5 minutes. I woke up just in time to watch our decent into Marseille, which is located on the Mediterranean sea. The view from the airplane was amazing, you could see all of the islands and how clean the water was. It was similiar to flying into Tampa, Florida. The landscape around Marseille is very similiar to that of San Jose or other other central to southern California town. Very hilly (not mountainous), dry and dead. The plant life is almost identical too.

The Marseille airport is on the far outskirts of town. In order to get to the center of town we needed to take a bus from the airport to the Grand Central station (I don't remember the actual name and I don't feel like looking it up). THe bus drive was great because we got to see the part of town that the school probably did not want us to see (similiar to the tourist zones in Paris). The outskirts of Marseille are poor, the houses are in very shabby condition and the area appeared to be very dirty. If you have spent any time in San Diego or closer to the border of Mexico, that's exactly how it looked. Except that the houses were made of a different material and there were no excess cars in the yards. Everything else, however, was the same. Fences made of anything and everything, tarps used as porch roofs, trash lining the fences of the backyards, Graffitti, etc. etc. I loved it.

When we arrived at the train station we were given the grand treatment. Upon entering the Central Station and Emergency evacuation was called. Horns were blaring and the police and other guards were everyway. By the way French guards are the equivalent of our national guard (not literally but figuratively). They wear fatigues and carry automatic rifles, it can either make you feel more safe or in danger. The train station's alarm was blaring like crazy and all of the shops inside were rushing to close their doors and get the crap out of there. People were almost panicking to get outside of the train station and the Police weren't doing much to calm anyone down.

Luckily we had just entered the train station so we were able to get out quickly. Instead of waiting for the station to reopen we decided to take the Metro. While walking to the Metro we discussed what we thought we really going on in the train station. Our conclusion was either (a) it was a drill or (b) Bomb threat because we had all seen the sniffer dogs and additional Police and ambulances came on the scene within a short amount of time.

Welcome to Marseille

We never did find out what happened, but it doesn't really matter. We made it to our aprtment safe and everything was fine. For the rest of the day we just walked around town, got situated in our apartment and prepared for our first day of school. Nothing else exciting happened.