Marseille: Notre Dame de la Garde

Last Saturday, Caitlin and I went to Marseille for the day. It started out a beautiful day with clear blue skies. When we got there, we ate lunch at a sidewalk cafe in the old port. We both had tuna steaks, which was actually one of the best meals we've had in Europe, and also one of the cheapest! Afterwards, we had ice cream at a traditional French Haagen-Dazs.

After eating, we went take a touristy little train up to Notre Dame de la Garde, a church built on top of a 400 meter high hill in Marseille. Going up the hill offered some pretty spectacular views.

Here are a few impressive figures about the church:

The church was absolutely beautiful inside, with some fantastic golden mosaics. It was actually rather small on the inside. Definitely smaller than St. Paul's in Pittsburgh, and probably pretty similar to St. Mary Magdalene's in Humble.

What a view! At this point it was getting colder and windier, so we took our little train back down the hill and checked out La Bourse, Marseille's famous shopping mall, where we tried on some very stylish hats.

After Caitlin finished torturing me with shopping (just kidding), we took the bus back to Aix. Being able to take these little weekend trips has been one of my favorite things about studying abroad. Next week, we are hoping to climb Mont St. Victoire!

Camargue Excursion

Last weekend, CEA sponsored an overnight excursion to the Camargue, or French cowboy country. It's the Rhone River delta, an area of marshland about an hour away. On Saturday morning, we went to a museum about the Camargue, where we learned about the area's history and agricultural products. After checking in to our hotel and eating lunch, we had the opportunity to go horseback riding! I hadn't ridden a horse since a girl scout field trip in elementary school, so I was pretty excited {and nervous}. We all got saddled up and set out on a ride through the marsh, stopping to see some flamingos!

When we got to a particularly muddy spot, my horse decided that he needed to take a mud bath. He proceeded to lie down and start rolling around in the mud! I slid off and immediately started freaking out, for several reasons:

1. I thought my horse was injured and I'd have to walk through the mud back to the stables.

2. I stupidly didn't bring a clean pair of shoes or jeans, so I'd have to wear my mud-encrusted clothes again the next day.

3. I was having a severe allergic reaction to hay. My eyes were starting to swell so badly that I could barely see. 

While I was freaking out, my horse got up and wandered away. Our riding instructor caught up with him, but instead of bringing the horse over to me, he motioned for me to walk over there. So, I began trekking through two feet of mud and reeds. Adam saw that I was getting pretty upset, so he jumped off his horse and carried me the rest of the way. What a gentleman! 

I got back on my horse and the rest of the ride went by without any more problems. Back at the hotel, I tried to clean myself up and reduce some of the hay-induced swelling. That night, we had a three-course dinner at a local restaurant. Our favorite course was a delicious fish soup, served with cheesy garlic bread. We ended the evening by playing Mafia with some other CEA students.  

I woke up the next morning to discover that my eyes were still horribly puffy! Here's a little demonstration of just funny I looked on Sunday morning:

After breakfast, we walked down to the beach and through the little town. We stayed in Sainte-Maries-de-Mer. It's named after three Marys {one of them being Mary Magdalene} who were rumored to settle in the village after leaving Jerusalem. With all that history, of course the town had a beautiful church built in the 11th century.

The Camargue is famous for the bulls that are raised in the area. The CEA director arranged for us to visit a working bull farm on Sunday morning. We took a hay ride to through their pastures to see the bulls up close. Since I was still recovering from my last encounter with hay, Adam sweetly arranged for me to ride on the tractor instead.

The owners of the bull farm served us a delicious three-course lunch. The main course was bull stew! Our final activity was going to a typical French bull fight. They're a lot different from Spanish bull fights because the bulls aren't killed at the end. Instead, a group of bull fighters run around the stadium, chasing and antagonizing the bull, while trying to grab several tassels off the bull's horns. It was really crazy to see the bull fighters jumping out of the arena when the bull got too close!
 

We had a great time on the Camargue Excursion. Seeing cowboys and going to a bull fight {which was almost like a rodeo} reminded us of good ole' Texas! 

Olive Oil Expedition

Last Friday, we went to Chateau Virant where olives and grapes are grown. They also make olive oil and wine at the Chateau. In fact, this is the only place in all of France where both olive oil and wine are made and grown in one location.

CEA took us, and we met up with a former CEA student named Jenna who now works at the chateau. It was a beautiful Friday afternoon without a cloud in the sky. Perfect day for a walk through the olive groves!

The first part of the tour was in the building where they made the olive oil and wine. It was interesting to see all the machines used. Olive oil only takes about an hour to go from olive to oil, whereas wine takes much longer because it has to ferment. Chateau Virant does something interesting in which anyone with homegrown olives can bring their olives (for example a few kilos of olives) to the chateau and they make olive oil from the combined mixture that everyone brings in. Then, you get back an amount of oil corresponding to how many olives you brought!

We also enjoyed both an olive oil tasting and a wine tasting. These olive oils were very tasty. I tried one of them straight on a spoon, and it was a little too spicy for me. I definitely prefer on bread. Caitlin still isn't a fan of wine, but it has definitely grown on me since coming to France. Unfortunately, I still can't describe wine any more accurately than with words like "sweet" and "winey."

After the tour and a brief stop in the gift shop, we went for a scenic walk through the olive groves before catching our bus. It was very pretty. There was also a sign for a rabbit crossing, but it was too far away to get a good picture.

You will notice that this olive tree seems to have three trunks. This is because back in 1957, there was a severe frost during the late spring, causing the temperature to drop some 40 degrees Celsius within a single day. Most of the olive trees lost almost all of there branches and most of their trunks. However, olive trees don't really die, so the French grafted trees together to help them get back to production more quickly. So most old olive groves in Provence have multiple trunks due to this frost.

Geneva

Last weekend, Adam and I used up our Eurail pass to visit Geneva, Switzerland. It's about a four-hour train ride from Aix, so we left after class on Friday afternoon and made it to Geneva around dinner time. We didn't actually stay in a hostel, because they were all booked. We found a rental apartment that was a little pricier than a hostel, but since it had a kitchen we were able to bring groceries and cook all our own meals, which definitely made up for the price difference. Early Saturday morning, we headed to the International Red Cross Museum.

It was definitely the most interesting museum we've been to in Europe! There's lots of exhibits about how the Red Cross has helped in wars, epidemics, and natural disasters. They have a time-line showing every crisis they've helped in since the Red Cross was founded in 1865. There's never been a year without any tragedies that require their help. Here we are posing with Henry Durant, the founder of the Red Cross and the winner of the first Nobel Peace prize. {Yes, Adam chose to give him bunny ears.}

 

After we left the museum, we walked over to the United Nations. We couldn't actually go inside {they're closed on the weekend} but it was still really cool to see the European headquarters! Outside the building, there are rows of flags from every member country. If you look closely, you can see that the Canadian flag is in the first row!

 

There was a giant statue of a chair with a broken leg in the UN plaza. We're not really sure what that's supposed to represent. After a quick lunch of sandwiches, we took a cruise on Lake Geneva - the largest body of freshwater in Central Europe. It was nice to get out of the city a little bit and see some of Switzerland's beautiful landscape. 

 

The cruise took up most of the afternoon, but we spent the rest of the day walking around Geneva's old town. We saw lots of horlogies, stores selling Switzerland's famous watches and cuckoo clocks. In the middle of old town, there was a clock made out of flowers! 

 

With so many international organizations headquartered in Geneva, we were able to find an English-speaking parish for Mass on Sunday morning. It was so amazing to be able to understand the readings and sermon again! After church, we had a little extra time before our train was supposed to leave, so we walked back to the lake to see the Jet d'Eau, or the world's largest fountain. It was turned off on Saturday because the winds were more than 12km/hour {if the fountain was on, it would have blown water all over the city!}.

 

Due to a fire on the tracks somewhere between France and Switzerland, our train was actually delayed for three hours. We finally made it back to Aix around 10:30 on Sunday night. Needless to say, we're happy to be done with trains and using budget airlines for our Spring Break trip!

 

L'OM Soccer Game

Last Sunday we went to a l'OM football (soccer) match. L'OM stands for "l'Olmpique Marseille." They were playing against l'Orient, from Brittany.

The game started at 5:00, and we arrived around 4:15. Unfortunately, our seats were on the south side of the stadium, and the subway brought us to the north side. When we tried to enter on the north side, they told us that we needed to go around. Going around meant going around not just the stadium, but the entire surrounding neighborhood. That took about 20 minutes. Finally, we made it to our seats.

Unfortunately, it was rather cold and windy. The game was still fun, though. It was different than an American football game. There was no announcer except for when substitutions were made, and the clock never stops except at halftime. One of the biggest differences was the fans.

I wouldn't say that the Marseille fans were that much more spirited than most student sections in the U.S., but the were very persistent. They kept singing songs, throughout the game, and they had a several people who just constantly beat on drums. Unfortunately, their cheering did not do much, as the game ended in a tie, 1-1.

Liquoristerie Tour & Wine Tasting

Adam and I have been lucky to spend a lot of our Friday afternoons on *free* CEA excursions. The last two excursions just happened to be alcohol-related. Although it's exciting to be allowed to drink here, we haven't been consuming much alcohol. We don't really like the taste that much, so frankly we'd rather spend our money on something else {like pastries!}.

Two weeks ago, we went with a group of CEA students to a local liquoristerie. This particular site is famous for inventing a new, legal version of absinthe, an apertif popular with Impressionist artists in the late 1800s. The drink was outlawed around the turn-of-the-century because it contained a substance that drove people literally insane when consumed in large doses. We toured the factory {not as interesting as chocolate} and then got to try absinthe, which is black licorice flavored and absolutely horrible!

Here are some pictures that I stole from my friend Hilary's blog. Absinthe is really strong by itself, so the liquoristerie uses this weird fountain contraption to dilute the drink with water.

Last Friday, we went to a wine tasting held in one of our classrooms at school. A really nice Canadian lady who's involved with the wine tourism industry organized the event for us. She brought six different wines {two white, two rose, and two red} for us to try. The best part was that each of these wines was produced locally and were within a cheap college student's budget - they were all around five euros per bottle. She gave us a brief lecture on history of wine-making and how wine is produced and then we moved on with the tasting. It was really hard to describe the smell and taste of each wine! They all started to taste the same after a while, although we did enjoy white wine the most.

{image via flickr}

It was great to learn more about liquor and wine over the past few weeks, but it hasn't changed our opinion of alcohol's yucky taste!

Arles

Last Saturday, we went to Arles. It was about an hour bus ride away. Arles was once known as the "Rome in Gaul," so there are many Roman ruins to see. When we arrived, we spent a little while walking through the market looking for the tourist office, where we got a map.

The first attraction we went to is the Roman amphitheater. It was pretty sweet. It can apparently seat about 20,000 people. They know pretty well, because it is still in use!

I thought that was pretty awesome. Starting around 1820 the city of Arles decided that Roman ruins were pretty sweet and they should preserve them. The first order of business to preserving this particular ruin was clearing out the neighborhood that had sprung up inside! There were something around 50 houses inside and 2 churches. That is crazy!

During the Middle Ages, the amphitheater was used as a fortress. Three towers were built into the side of the arena. We were able to climb up one of them, affording us some pretty excellent views of the city.

The tower walls had several stones missing, creating this little square niches. And almost every one of these niches contained... a pigeon! Or two. It was weird to look up at the wall, hear cooing, and notice that there about 15 pigeons all staring down at you. One of them took flight and scared Caitlin.

The second ruin we visited was the Roman theater. This is also still in use, but it hasn't held up over the centuries as well. There were a few columns from the original building still up, so that was cool.

After eating some sandwiches for lunch, we went to the Espace Van Gogh. We thought it was going to be a museum, but it was actually a university named after Van Gogh. It was still very pretty though. It used to be a mental hospital that Van Gogh stayed in. He painted the same garden and the city displayed the artwork in the square, which was pretty cool to see.

Next we walked to the Constantine baths. It started to rain once we got there, but we headed a little time to kill, so we played hide and seek. It didn't work very well though because all the hiding places were pretty obvious.

Last, we went to some cloisters in an old monastery next to the town's cathedral. They had some really cool tapestries on display. It's crazy to think that this was the only outdoors a cloistered monk would see!

Over all, Arles was a fun day trip. The best part was how cheap it was! It only cost 2 euros to ride the bus round-trip from Aix. We bought a pass to get into all the monuments for only 7 euros!