i have to go home tomorrow :(

nick: “i want new ankles.”
sarah: “i want you to put on some pants.”

(8:45 p.m.)

after that exchange that got the morning off to a funny start, nick and i spent a lovely day in marseille. we had planned to be up in time to catch the 9:30 bus, but surprise of surprises (which I say in the most sarcastic tone of voice possible), that didnÂ’t happen. instead, we got up at 10, had a leisurely breakfast, took showers, and finally caught the 11:30 bus that had us in marseille just after 12:00. nick’s friend christy, the same one that was at dinner last night, happened to be on the same bus this morning as she was heading to marseille to her lab, but since she didn’t have to be there right away, she walked with us from the bus/train station down to the old port.

marseille was a really neat city. it is by far the oldest city in france, having been around since about 600 b.c as a bustling shipping community. the old port was really cool. it is too small to serve as a port for today’s enormous cargo ships, so now it serves as a ferry terminal and marina. there were sailboats upon sailboats upon sailboats resting at the docks. it was really pretty in the bright sun (yes, we had another gorgeously sunny and cloudless day). from the port, we caught a bus for the short ride up the steep hill to notre dame de la garde. the church was nice to see, but the real attraction is the awesome view of the entire city and the mediterranean coast and the mountains surrounding marseille. it reminded me a lot of twin peaks in san francisco, a pair of hills that overlooked all of the golden gate.

the water was so blue, it was absolutely gorgeous. i could have stayed up there all day, but we had to catch the bus back down to get back to the old port in time to catch a boat! we had planned to take a cruise past the calanques. a calanque is, accorinding to nick’s book, “a narrow and steep-sided coastal valley which has been bored into the solid rock by a river, whose course was usually guided by a fault, during the periods of the sea’s retreat, and which has subsequently been submerged by the waves during cycles of flooding. such fluctuations in sea level result from the alternation of glaciation and deglaciation on the earth’s surface over the course of the past two million years.” (i copied all that because i didn’t really know how to describe it briefly in english.)

whew. anyway. point being that the cruise past the calanques turned out to be out of service at the moment, so we only saw them from afar, but they were still cool. instead, we took a boat to the iles du frioul, two rock islands a half hour boat ride off the coast. the islands were nice and quiet, and had a great view of all of marseille and of chateau d’if, an island with an old prison on it that the fictional count of monte cristo was imprisoned in. sort of like france’s version of alcatraz. hmm. actually, alcatraz is probably the u.s.’s version of chateau d’if, but oh well.

we caught the boat back and were back at the old port just before 5:00. from there, we walked to the cathedrale sainte-marie majeure. we had seen it from a distance and decided to check it out on a whim. it was totally worth it–much cooler than notre dame de la garde, though to be fair, nowhere near as good a view as the city. 😉 from there, we walked through old marseille back to the bus station and voila, here we are back in aix.

tonight we’re going to see punch drunk love with some of nick’s friends. it’s in english, with french subtitles. hurrah, i will be able to understand it!