Vacation! (Avignon, Marseille, La Londe)

Mediterranean sunset at La Londe!! :)

The Pont d'Avignon at night and the old Palais des Papes

View of the Pont d'Avignon and the Rhone from a park

So after being in France for about a month, they gave us a nice 12 day vacation. I decided to take a little trip down to the Mediterranean with my friends Autumn and Ellen. Autumn is an assistant up in Nancy and she came down on Saturday night. Sunday morning we grabbed a train from Saint Etienne to Avignon (yes, there is a famous song about “Le Pont d’Avignon”). The city was very cute and had old Roman walls surrounding the city; very beautiful. The Pont d’Avignon used to be extremely long, stretching from the city to a fortress across two rivers, but most of the bridge was washed out by flooding. Now the bridge stretches about halfway across the Rhone River and is now a historical site and no longer a complete bridge. We had fun exploring the city for the day and spent the night in a hostel right on the river.

Monday, we headed on a train down to Marseille, which is the 3rd largest city in France. This large port town was an important part of the Roman empire. The Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde is a beautiful church that looks over the Vieux Port (Old Port) from a hill on the southern part of the city center. There are a few fortresses around the old port that look magnificent at night when they are all lit up! I have heard many stories about Marseille being very unsafe and not so welcoming for tourists, but we didn’t have any problems at all. The travel book I am using says, “Gritty, grimy and gloriously real….its rough-and-tumble edginess exerts an irresistible pull.” A lot of people have also told me they weren’t really impressed with Marseille, but for some reason I absolutely loved it. I think a lot of it has to do with the landscape of the city, the Mediterranean and the cultural differences of Marseille compared to other French cities. Being on the coast, it is very close to bordering North Africa and you can tell this just by a walk down the street. There is an overwhelming population of Arabic and African peoples which adds a lot of culture of the city. On the way back to the hostel, I met an Australian man who had been traveling through Europe since May 1st. He was in the process of writing a book about it in which he talks about different cultures and people by sharing his experiences. The interesting part was that he was in a wheelchair so needless to say his experiences have been very different than the average traveler.

After walking around Marseille Tuesday morning, we decided to head to Ellen’s aunt and uncle’s house on the coast in La Londe. We took a train from Marseille to Toulon and then a bus from Toulon to Hyeres and La Londe. Her aunt and uncle are British, but both retired so they spend a lot of time at their home in La Londe. They had another aunt and uncle and their 2 girls there, so originally they told us we couldn’t stay there. We showed up at their doorstep at about 3 in the afternoon and they pretty much insisted that we stay since it was quite the journey to get back. They took us down to the Mediterranean and Ellen, Autumn, the 2 girls and I took a swim. Surprisingly the water was quite warm, once you got in… took some beautiful pictures of the sunset over the Mediterranean and walked up a path into the woods on the point. The landscape and plant life reminded me a lot of the California coast by Big Sur and Monterey Bay. It was absolutely gorgeous. After we went back to her aunt and uncle’s and they cooked us this wonderful meal of lamb, roasted vegetables (potatoes, carrots, squash, onions), broccoli, beans, cheese and red wine (of course!), ice cream and cake.

The next morning we took the bus and train back and caught a train from Marseille back to home. We had originally planned on going to Aix-en-Provence for a day or so to meet up with another assistant, but that was canceled because we stayed at the Mediterranean instead. Maybe next time!