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-Addie

-cha

Just west and uphill of the port, Panier is filled with terra-cotta-roofed buildings painted aged white and palest yellow, often with light sky-blue or sea-foam shutters and sheet flung across iron balconies to dry. It has charming bread and pastry and soap shops filled with handmade goods and peaceful plazas with cobblestone and trees and fountains.

In many ways, Panier is not unlike the rest of Marseille’s neighborhoods, but there is something even more antique to the quarter. Perhaps it’s the intensified layers of graffiti and decopaged posters built up over years and years on residential buildings and shop fronts. Or maybe it’s the even-narrower streets and slightly more worn cobblestone.

We toured and shopped in the quarter in the morning, then headed back to the hostel to drop off things. We found lunch at a Middle Eastern sandwich stand along the port, then strolled Marseille’s major shopping roads to take advantage of up to 75 percent off most items. The North African and Middle Eastern cultures provide a strong influence on the port city, especially along Marseille’s larger roads. The modern, one-of-a-kind globe sculptures that dot the city seem to speak to Marseille’s interesting international mix.

The traditional French stores have not lost their draw, however. We found a  fabulous candy store called Cure Gourmand Sucreuitier and couldn’t turn down a purchase of caramel and nougat and hard candy from the pink-and-golden-toned shop.

Dinner was another mix of international and French; we ate at ZenZen Asian Tapas along the port, then had a Nutella crepe from a Middle Eastern stand as we walked along the port at sunset. The typically French crepe had a hint of jasmine.

Most of the tourists here are French, so it seems this is where they go for a taste of the exotic. And we’re here for a taste of the French. But it’s thoroughly enjoyable to get a combination of the two.

-Addie

Once we got there, however, confusion set in until Chantel asked the attendant about the train and received a print-out schedule for trains we could take without reservations. We boarded the train to Pepignan, and had 10-minute layovers in Pepignan and Narbonne before arriving in Marseille at 5 PM.

The French scenery is surprisingly different from Spain — much more green, for one.  Natural trees wash the hillside, along with acres of sunflower farms and strips of young tree farms. As we got closer to Marseille, our train went through mile after mile of seaside saltwater marshes and rocky cliffs descending into cool blue.We arrived in Marseille, purchased our tickets to Aix-en-Provence, Avignon and Paris (the last of the trip!) and took a taxi to the hostel since we couldn’t find a map of the city.

Our new hostel, Vertigo Vieux Port, is magnificent! It’s just up the street from the port, is air-conditioned (though that’s hardly necessary in Marseille’s perfect weather) and we share a spacious en suite room with just two girls. It has breakfast included and a great price.

We unpacked our gear, then headed to dinner near the port in one of Marseille’s charming side streets. Almost everything near the port is expensive, the menus and prices posted along each restaurant, but we found a quiet Indian restaurant with outdoor seating that offered tandoori and curry for 10 Euros each. Our first meal in Marseille, ordering Indian food off a French menu as we watched the sun set over boat sails in the old port, is very representative of the city. Marseille is a very multi-cultural, thoroughly historic and exquisitely charming city. I now see why it’s so easy to fall in love with France.

-Addie

We got a late start to the day, being that our six Czech roommates awoke at the same time, just before we got up, and filed in and out of the hallway bathroom for an hour and a half. We finally staked out in the hallway to form a shower line and went to the grocery store for lunch and the metro for the park.

Two transfers on the train dropped us off an uphill walk from the park. Tourists streamed up and down, and when we finally reached the entry to the park — two Gaudi-esque guard towers and a stone-mosaic wall — it was filled with tourists. We trekked around to a fairly peaceful, shady part under a Gaudi-designed cave overlooking palm trees and a peach building decorated in ornate swirls, and we  found a spot to read and write as the lazy afternoon slipped by. Ivory butterflies danced upward into the sunlight outside the stone arch. We could hear a string instrumentalist pick out classical chords further downhill, and in the cave a band strummed more acoustical harmonies.

We also toured the park before we left. It is a sprawling yet beautifully designed space. In the center are stairs and public spaces built into a hillside, at the top of which is a large outdoor courtyard with mosaic benches that overlook the sea and city from its northern point.

We eventually headed back to the hostel and grabbed dinner at the local grocery store. We ate on the hostel’s rooftop terrace with a German artist named Mouk (pronouced like “look” with a M), a nice change from our usual hostel-mates. She was around 40 and had spent most of her adult life traveling alone. She saved and took short trips for six years before traveling non-stop for four years, traveling to  every continent. We spoke about her travels and art as we ate, and I also discovered that she planned to go to Barcelona’s Magic Fountain at the entry to Montjuic that night. I had been disappointed when Chantel and I walked by the fountain during a day and it wasn’t on, so when I heard that the fountain is used for a Thursday-Sunday water and light show at night, I decided to go with Mouk to check it out while Chantel stayed at the hostel.

The fountain is a stunning, dreamy display. The street leading up to the hillside fountain and the museum palace was lined with small lit fountains on both sides. The enormous Magic Fountain itself, the largest lit-up fountain in the world according to Mouk, begins at 9 PM and goes through a unique  and varied show of water designs and a rainbow of colors, complete with classical music.

On the metro to the fountain, Mouk told me that she will stay in her hometown the next two years to care for her mother, diagnosed with lung cancer. She said, with regret inflected but not spoken directly, that she had never had a real boyfriend; she hadn’t been dating anyone  when she left to travel for four years, and when she came back, everyone in her hometown was married. She seemed sad that this was her last trip for a while, being that travel is her life and inspires her art, and this was her last night in Barcelona. But she was excited to see the fountain.

We arrived and found a spot to sit as the sun was setting, and the peach streaks in the sky matched the peaches and pinks that stained the fountain. We stayed until the show finished at 11 PM, and half-way through, as the sky turned midnight blue, the lighted palace received a halo of spotlights that shot into the sky behind the dome.

It was a dream to watch, but something about it provoked thoughts about life too. At one peaceful point, Mouk asked me, quite poignantly, if I was afraid of anything. I answered, “Snakes,” promptly, humorously. There might be things less tangible that I’m afraid of: getting a bad grade or not getting a job when I graduate. But I avoid those out of a certain compulsion rather than out of the instinctive skin-crawl-and-scream-inducing fear that comes with snakes. So that was also the first answer that came to mind.”Ah,” she replied. “Well, at least that’s easy enough to avoid.”  I asked her what she was afraid of, and she provided a more resonant response than mine: “Of never being able to experience love,” she said with, perhaps, another tinge of regret in her voice. “I have to try it once.”

The Magic Fountain is, indeed, magical and eye-opening, like Mouk. It was a wonderful last night in Barcelona.

-Addie

A long walk across the city to the northern Eixample neighborhood, pleasingly more residential and less touristy than Old Town, led us to our new hostel: Graffiti. It isn’t top-notch, but our room has less people, the showers are less grungy, and we have a dining terrace. Overall, it’s an improvement.

After we checked in, we walked a few blocks west to the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece (construction is still underway, set to be done in 2025). It is an enormous and detailed cathedral based on his love of religion and his influences from the natural world: trees, plants and minerals. Ten Euros (which fund the construction) let us tour the inside, where towering columns based on trees create a magnificent stone canopy. The site was jaw-dropping and modern, at times shockingly so. Like nothing else we will ever see.

After the Sagrada Familia, we walked to Gaudi’s other famous work in the area, La Pedrera, nicknamed the “Stone Quarry.” Built on a corner, the wavy pattern of the grey facade undulates like large ripples in a small pool.

We returned to the hostel and went off to a local Wash & Dry to do laundry. Such a relief. We stopped by a local grocery chain for dinner and headed back to hostel to read and listen to our new Czech and Eastern European roommates chatter under flourescent lights as they prepared to go out clubbing.

-Addie

Hello readers,

Finally pictures have arrived.

Look under the map of Spain and France in our header to our blog and there you can now see the cities we have visited thus far ( in alphabetical, NOT chronological order).

Click on the link and it will take you to a page that says ‘Chantel’s Pictures of BlahBlahCity’.  Hopefully, when Addie gets back to the States she can add her photos to these pages as well.

As for my photos, some are doubles, some are blurry, if you have any problems with that then you can go to Europe and take your own pictures (which I encourage you to do regardless).

Keep an eye out, there will be more to come.

-chantel

We began our day at La Boqueria for breakfast and a packed lunch, then we walked across Barcelona to the shaded mountainside neighborhood of Montjuic, the home of Barcelona’s largest art museum — housed in a grand hill-side palace framed by towers — and the Olympic stadium, among other attractions. We stopped for a break at the museum, hanging out in the lobby, after climbing tier after tier of stairs and escalators on the way up. The terrace entrance  to the art museum provides stunning views of the city, as it is positioned at the city’s western edge. We snapped photo after photo, glimpsing the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona’s most famous unfinished church designed by Alberg Gaudi’s artistic genius. After we rested at the museum, we continued our hike up the mountainside Montjuic and its main road, planning to have lunch at the top, which promised a castle and views of the sea.

We stopped at a park or two on our way up, gazing through the trees at the breathtaking views all along the way. We finally reached the castle and wandered around, seeing an anti-Capitalism display in a ground-floor room and panoramic views of the city and coast from the top. We spotted a shaded trail below the castle as we peered over the edge, and we went to search for it as we exited the shade of the building.

We found that the trail led us to a sturdy stone fence surrounding the castle’s gardens, and we set up for an afternoon of picnic-ing and reading. It was a surreal afternoon, as I would glance up from book to be shocked, once and over again, at the gorgeous view endlessly in front of me.

We finally returned to the hostel to read in the plaza by our hostel (we’ve been reading a lot if you can’t tell) and grabbed a late snack at KFC, the cheapest protein close to us. Book update for the day: I finished “Unaccustomed Earth” by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Chantel is two-thirds of the way through Steig Larsson’s “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” It has been a productive vacation too.

-Addie

After we got to the end of Las Ramblas, we toured the port and a coastal shopping area, which included a movie theater where Chantel and I briefly contemplated seeing the new “Twilight” movie for humor and air conditioning. Deciding against it, we continued our walk up to Barcelonetta, a small fishing neighborhood near the beach. Charmingly, multi-colored towels and sheets dotted every balcony on the narrow streets. It must have been laundry day.

We walked north to the Parc de la Ciutadella, a large park with a beautiful tiered fountain with gilded statues and stone dragons that we gazed at as we cooled off. We weren’t the only internationals in the park. The city seems to be filled with backpackers and visiting European families.

We trailed further north toward our hostel eventually, traveling through Old Town or Barri Gotic to see the Esglesia de la Santa Maria Del Mar, the only church in Barcelona completely built in the Catalan Gothic style, and the more traditional — yet stunning — Cathedral of Barcelona. We stopped back at La Boqueria to grab a quick dinner of fruit and other cheap produce and headed back to the hostel to read.

Our eighth day was also the day I found out that our hostel doesn’t have a laundry machine, or it has one but doesn’t let hostel-goers use it, so that means day eight is day two of wearing the same dress, a dress that will make it to five days before I find a washer after a scheduled change of Barcelona hostels. Chantel did laundry in Alicante, so she’s good on that front for the moment. Word of advice: Don’t hurriedly pack clothes in an enclosed backpack after you’ve left them on the shower-room floor; you will not be able to wear the outfits until thoroughly washed.

 -Addie

We woke up an hour later than intended and only an hour and a half before our train, so we skipped showers, crammed packing and booked it to the train station. We made it to our 9:25 AM train in plenty of time and embarked on our five-hour journey to Barcelona, seeing peeks of the Mediterranean through the golden grassy hills and watching Pixar’s “Up” in Spanish.

We arrived at 2 PM and lingered at the train station for two hours in the information and ticket lines, trying to figure out how to get to Marseille in five days. Feeling the heat — and feeling gross — we took the metro to our hostel and showered before walking to the other side of the plaza to an air-conditioned local pizza chain showing a Spanish courtroom reality show a la Judge Judy, or so it seemed, on television. There’s nothing like pizza,  soda  and air-conditioning to alleviate exhaustion. The TV show provided some humor.

Still, that night was not the ideal night to arrive at our 12-bed mixed dorm room with a grungy ladies room, half a hostel full of women taking turns in two shower stalls and one locking toilet stall, which quickly ran out of toilet paper. Perhaps we were spoiled in our air-conditioned private double in Alicante, but the lack of AC and the excess of loud Australian, British, German and Irish hostel mates just didn’t feel right. However, it was somewhat heartening to overhear my first extended English-language conversation in a week. They were talking about the heat — in so many vulgar terms — and discussed which bar to go to. I was on the top bunk reading “Unaccustomed Earth” by Jhumpa Lahiri while Chantel read on the balcony. It seemed fitting. Barcelona’s party scene has proved not to be for us.

-Addie