Christmas in Marseille: It's not the end of the world.

It's the 30th December 2012, and we're all still here. No zombie apocalypse, or rain of fire in this part of the world anyways, in fact, the weather here is still beautiful, and not seasonal at all. All I wanted for Christmas was a winter wonderland in Aix-en-Provence; Santa you suck balls.

I've not long returned back to Aix from spending Christmas with my mum and sister in Marseille, which was lovely. It's a shame there were no apartments on leboncoin.fr for the centre of Aix for a reasonable price otherwise we probably would have stayed here, but alas, we ended up in the big city.

And even after living here for several months, I've never been to Marseille that often, and I've certainly never spent a great deal of time there. I now kinda like it. It has that slightly local feel (despite it being France's second city), as well as being very multicultural. There are turkish kebab stalls everywhere, and Algerian-style clothes stores everywhere you look, even right next to Hermès, Louis Vuitton and the Chanel store.
It's a bit intimidating though, and the general advice given from our universities to female Erasmus students to be careful of French men in clubs and pubs applies to the streets here as well. My mum commented on how many heads turned when walking past a café, seemingly only frequented by North African men, and how, to her, they looked a bit like they were on the prowl even at midday.
My thirteen year old sister also got hit on by a much older (and drunk) guy near the main train station, but she brushed him off in quite a classy manner nevertheless, which was equally as surprising!

One memory which I will never forget is turning my back for two minutes and then my mum telling me she just accidentally got involved in a drug deal in the middle of the street.

Marseille is madness.

As well as being one of the poorest cities in France with a high rate of unemployment, it can also be the most beautiful and inspiring. We quickly realised this climbing up to the Notre Dame de la Garde, a large cathedral overlooking Marseille and its port. The views were so breathtaking and the panorama of the city is so big that it wouldn't even fit in one photo even from so high up, and they really made us feel small.

Seafood on the port in Marseille

Me, mum and sister in Marseille.

Notre Dame de la Garde, Marseille.

the city doesn't even fit in  the background of this photo. Amazing.

Christmas Day was nice, we had dinner late, watched some trashy films on trashy French TV channels, opened presents and got drunk.

Boxing Day was really interesting though, we went for a walk right down the coast from the Port down by the Calanques [rock formations on the coast just outside of Marseille] and the weather was lovely, there were even people on the beach!

What the French do best...

I've just found out that there is to be an SNCF [train company] strike in France (as well as Air France) on the day that I have to take the train from Marseille to Montpellier to get back to England, so i'm seemingly fucked. As much as I complain about Ryanair being the crème de la shit of air travel, I would rather like to take my flight on the 25th thank you very much.....

Now the biggest problem is that it really isn't that far to Montpellier from around here, but I don't think there are any buses that go directly there, so my only reasonable way of getting there is by train. That and i've already booked my train tickets in advance to take advantage of the cheaper prices. So yes. Thanks France!

It is my opinion that the national hobby of France is to find as many legal ways of not working as possible throughout the year......and they couldn't have stumbled upon a better time. It's Toussaint holiday at the end of October (spanning through to the beginning of November) and most schools/universities will be out for 'half-term' because of this.

Now the clever part:

Most schools/unis will end classes Friday 26th until around Monday 5th November, giving just over 10 days with weekends of holiday, some schools may give an extra week.

But the strikers are planning to cut services completely from the Wednesday 24th- Friday 26th October, effectively only giving them two working days through that week. If you're a train driver and you don't have to work [solid] hours through the weekend then you're absolutely laughing.

You've got to hand it to them, if there's one thing they know how to do well, it's to create carnage through deprivation of public services!


It could be cynical to say that the French don't like working, but rather enjoy pleasure, or it could be true. Who knows. Given the choice between sunbathing in my back garden with a mojito and working a long, arduous shift on the trains I know which I'd choose......

After 2 weeks I finally made it to Provence...

After leaving Newcastle on the 14th of this month, I have finally made it to Provence. Via London and Paris for a week(ish) each I'm actually in the region which I will be calling my home for the next 6 months....but still not actually in the city where I will be living. Don't ask. I just get itchy feet.

I arrived in Marseille after taking the TGV from Paris Gare de Lyon, which presented itself as a huuuuge, long double-decker train with about 10 carriages. It really was an epic journey too, right through the rural heart of France, southward-bound to Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, or Marseille station in particular. 

For those not in the know, the region I am in is highlighted here (in red)

I will be staying here for 6 months in Aix-en-Provence, hopefully travelling around as much as possible, while at the same time learning about the local culture and lifestyle as well as taking up the language more easily. I'm studying here (if you haven't been reading my previous posts then you've missed the party) and then afterwards I will be schlepping over to Koblenz in Germany to do the exact same thing again.





So I made it to Marseille after a long TGV journey, lost and totally unaware where my hostel was in the city. Turns out it was right next to a métro station in the city centre, yet I still managed to get lost for an hour or two. Whoops! Ended up seeing a hell of a lot of the city centre though, which was lovely....regardless of how many hundreds of bags of sugar my rucksack felt like.

My hostel was nice, but in no way as communal as the hostel in Paris, which is a shame as there was no real place to hang out inside; we were almost forced to go to a cocktail bar to talk and share stories etc. I say forced......5€ mojitos were calling my name all night.

Marseille is a nice city, quite big and quite intimidating at first, but as soon as you have your bearings, understand the métro system and can find the boulangerie, there is no real major problem. It's a very culturally diverse city, lots of nationalities and different cultures meet at this city to create a melting-pot of hip-hop, provençal and typical touristy culture. Some say the city has its own mindset, but I am yet to see what this means exactly. Either way it's the nearest big city to me when i'm in Aix-en-Provence, so i'm sure I will be visiting often.

Restaurants near the Vieux-Port

Boats on the Vieux Port

Nice tasty looking little things which I may or may not have gorged myself on in Marseille....

Irish pub in Marseille....definitely one of the busiest places I've found so far

View of the Cathedral from some Provençal-looking streets

view over the city from the train station down 102 stone steps....

So Marseille was nice, just very very hot. It's the end of August (one of the hottest summer months down here) and we really did experience the beginning of the heatwave.


After Marseille, I travelled to a large fishing port called Sanary-sur-Mer, which lies further to the south of France and therefore closer to the Mediterranean Sea. It's really a gorgeous place with over 310 days of heat/sun per year, totaly inverse to the UK where we have 310 days of constant rain throughout the year. We even had snow/hail/torrential rain this July!!!

I've been staying here a while, visiting some local Provençal towns/villages and sunbathing naked all casual and that. It was a great experience, although now i'm a little bit sunburnt on my back and my forehead. Not cool......
Here's some pictures of the town and the neighbouring beaches blah blah:

Sanary-sur-mer view over the port with palm trees and boats and all manner of pretty things

There's a night market here in Sanary - where you can buy local produce like soap, herbs, lavender and bottles of overpriced pastis

Le Lavandou beaches

There's a whole lot of totally bollock naked people sunbathing down there haha

This one's just for my mum and sister - So jealous of me being so close to St Tropez

And finally....a picture of the local drink pastis with a carafe of water in the background to dilute it to taste. It's basically aniseed liquer by Ricard or 51 which is great to drink allll day long. Drinking pastis is my new favourite hobby.

So that's about it from me until I finally arrive in Aix-en-Provence 2 and a half weeks later than when I left Newcastle, UK. Hopefully it won't be too scary an experience to move into halls and work out the bloody university administrative system.....

This is what i'm doing.

The life of a tourist revolves, seemingly, around trying to find the most beautiful building, or piece of art, or vista in any one given place and Instagramming that shit into the ground, sucking the life out if it and turning it into cliché, forever being listed as "Top 10 Places to Wear Bermudas, Flip Flops and Take your Screaming, Spoilt Children to 'Show Them the World'".

Even in the cold North, where you wouldn't even expect tourists to bother visiting, dodging them and the photographic cross-fire they create should be considered Olympic. I dare you, just dare you to accidentally include me into your family album when i'm hungover, looking like shit and on the way to the pub (again). Go on. Do it.

But all of this pent-up, repressed hatred for tourism in my mind has taken one massive(ly) hilarious U-turn. While in Newcastle hungover, looking like shit and on the way to the pub to meet a man (wink wink nudge nudge), and to meet my favourite barman who knows what I want before I do, I was asked by a lovely little Korean family to take a photo of them on their walks through Newcastle. This would normally annoy me and I would cringe a little inside, but this time I was very happily amused. I was walking through this alleyway (shown in the image below). Not very picturesque, right? Exactly. The Tyneside Cinema is a local landmark though, a great place to hangout and something of a legend so I wouldn't have been surprised if they wanted that in the background. Nope.

They wanted a photo of them just standing in this alleyway together next to the only other things there: a few overflowing bins and the side of an H&M.

I love this shit. 

They got their photo of course. Even with a smile! It made me think, over my pint-and-hot man-date, what tourism really is.

Although I will be sharing some of my snaps, I won't be posing in front of monuments too much, thankfully. You don't wanna see me in shorts anyways...

I really like finding the dark underbelly of cities and the world. Sex shops in Paris and 'kinky' clubs in the 'most romantic city in the world' and German electro clubs with naked men (however ugly) just wandering around all casual; not so far off the beaten track that there's nothing to see, but somewhere dark enough to get lost for just a little while....


Anyways, this blog post was supposed to be me detailing my (additional) travel plans, but I somehow got off course with my passion for bad things. After arriving in Marseille on the 23rd August I will be:

• staying in a hostel in Marseille for a night, and most likely exploring the nightlife with any other backpackers who are game.
• Travelling to Toulon for the morning of the 24th, and then head off to Cannes for the late evening.
• Stay the night in Cannes and head to the beach for the day (25th). Maybe go be a touristy twat if I can be arsed. Cannes again.
• Nice the next morning after checking out. Heading to have the best swordfish I've ever had, again. Might stay the night, depends on prices.
• Next day - Monaco (27th) and up to Grasse. Smallish places, so it shouldn't be too hard to explore them all. Night in Grasse maybe, or Nice again. Haven't decided yet. (I'm not good at plans)
• Down to Sainte-Maxime and getting a chartered boat over to ST TROPEZ BITCHEZZZ. Back to Marseille for the evening.
• Finally heading to Aix-en-Provence!

La France, j'arrive tout de suite!



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