Au revoir, Marseille!

POSTING # 3  -- JUNE 29


I'm sliding into a nice routine, only to realize tomorrow is moving day. I'll be taking the train north to Albi so this will be my last post from La Belle Marseille.

Breakfast looks a lot like this every day!

 Because people here like to linger over food and coffee (and cigarettes), the servers are in no hurry either, so this usually kills a couple of hours. I've started taking my computer to breakfast with me so I am managing to get some writing done.

After that, I head out for a run or go to the beach and watch fit guys with gray hair play volleyball. Usually, the guys and I have the beach pretty much to ourselves except this past weekend!

In Marseille, there's no such thing as too tan!

The French are apparently not concerned about either lung cancer or skin cancer (or crowds!) (or being half naked in a crowd!). The death defiers who really blow me away are the ones who are smoking WHILE sunbathing! When I asked someone about that, she said "Americans should be more worried about being shot and less worried about getting cancer since you all carry guns!"

Afternoons, I find new cafes where they don't mind if I sit and write. Once in a while I order a Perrier or another coffee to keep them (and me) happy. I've started writing a new novel -- this one is about a woman who decides to NOT take a motorcycle trip through Europe but rather goes out on her own through France, eating dinners alone, accepting a cup of coffee every now and then from a Frenchman who is most likely married (more on this in a minute!), trying not to get run over by Vespas that go 30 mph on the sidewalks, all the while finishing her first novel. I'm thinking of calling it "Eat", since praying and loving are probably not going to happen for me on this trip.

My French is coming along great. Actually, it's not, though for a brief moment this morning, when I did not have to consciously think before saying goodbye to someone and wishing him a good day, I confess to feeling pretty cocky. But I was quickly humbled minutes later by my faux pas with the man who runs the desk at my hotel. I walked in eating an ice cream cone and said, in my best French, "C'est mon prix pour courant," which I thought meant "This is my prize for running." However, he looked a bit stunned, then gave me sort of a lascivious leer and smiled and I hurried up the two flights of stairs to my room, locked the door, and did a Google translation of what I had just said. Apparently, I told him, "This is my current price".

My second faux pas of the day was not noticing the hole in my laundry bag that held lacy items of personal apparel. I inadvertently left an interesting trail, but fortunately, a guy from the laundry caught up with me and handed me my lost items. He kinda had a lascivious leer too, come to think of it!

Saturday, after buying a groovy pair of aviator sunglasses (very a la mode, and no, Gary -- that doesn't mean "with ice cream" -- although I did have some ice cream while wearing them, so... ),

I walked up this hill to Notre Dame de la Garde, a beautiful cathedral with a pretty creepy crypt below full of a lot of famous dead people.

I ended the evening having dinner at a table next to a huge wedding party and listening to their cheesy wedding singer who was a dead ringer for Gene Wilder. He was definitely a legend in his own mind, but it was fun hearing My Funny Valentine and Fly Me To The Moon sung with a French accent.

This is my new friend, Cecile Roure (think Roy Orbison's growl on Pretty Woman and you've got it!), an operatic soprano who held my place in the Opera line and will one day move to New York City to realize her dream of being world-famous. We took each other to the incredible Chez Fonfon last night where we had a five-course dinner that included champagne, crustini with shrimp, fish soup, dorado, a beautiful salad with local cheeses, an amazing assortment of mini dessert tastes, and espresso. Watch for her -- she'll be famous one day!

Tonight, I went back to my local dinner hangout -- Le Pointu -- to enjoy one more pizza with four cheeses -- camembert, roquefort, goat cheese, and mozzarella -- and ran into a man I met there a few nights ago, Mouldi. His daughter is apparently a big movie star in the Arabic world. Mouldi invited me to go with him to Tunisia on Friday for a week. While he is there, he will be making a bid for the Tunisian Parliament. (I swear I am NOT making this up!) It was tempting if only to make my book more interesting, but, not to worry, I declined! 

Mouldi

Au revoir, Marseille!

WELCOME TO MY TRAVELBLOGUE!

Find more George Harrison songs at Myspace Music

POSTING  #1 - JUNE 22


Hi, Everyone -- Bear (or is it bare?) with me, please, as I try to figure out this Blogging thing. Where are all the teenagers when you need one? If any of you have suggestions for how to make this better (assuming it's gonna work at all), I am open to hearing them.


I'm gonna make this short, to see if it's working. Tonight is my last night in Dublin -- tomorrow I'm off to France, beginning with a week in Marseille. I had written a first post, fascinating reading, I'm sure -- but it got lost. If it ever shows up again, I'll share it with you. But for now, it's out there somewhere in the clouds. 


Here are a couple of photos (maybe, if this works) -- the first two are my home here in Dublin -- above O'Neill's Pub. I was handed a pint of Guinness with my key when I checked in! 

I think I'm a wee bit Irelanded out. I've had numerous versions of fish'n'chips, but today, Desperately Seeking Normal, I opted for The Best Cheeseburger in Dublin, or so it was advertised. It WAS great! And instead of a Guinness, I washed the burger down with red wine. And it was cool that instead of Irish music, this joint was playing Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone. but one glance at the TV, and I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore. A bunch of guys, all dressed in white, were trying to hit a rubber ball with a very flat bat - India vs. the West Indies and the score was 4.3 overs, 20 runs, and 2 wickets! Strangely enough, every one of the pitches bounced BEFORE it even got to the batter, and when he did hit it, everybody kind of ran around in circles because the ball never really did go that far. The score went to 5.5 overs with 31 runs but still two wickets and then Harbhajan Singh was up and everybody got pretty excited (or not). He missed the first one but the second one was good. 


Second glass of wine and the score is 137 to 6 and the run rate is 4.03 per over. They're saying India was 69-4 at lunch. Okay, if they've been playing since lunch, I'm outa here! But first, I'm having a Nutty Irishman for dessert (Baileys and Frangelica). 


I miss you all!


Cheers!

Gayle

Bonjour from Marseille!

POSTING # 2  -  JUNE 25


Bonjour from Marseille! Waking up in my pink room at the Hotel Moderne is a great way to start the day!

I mean, how can I take myself too seriously when I open my eyes to this?

I left Dublin early on June 23rd and was highly entertained by my cab driver, all the way to the airport. He explained that what I might have thought was his beer belly was actually a red lemonade belly. He gave up cigarettes 7 years ago when Ireland banned smoking in public places, and he replaced them with lemonade. His sense of smell has come back tenfold since he quit so he won’t allow “chips” or anything else for that matter to be eaten in his cab. He said as others regained their sense of smell, pubs were forced to replace their carpets which the newly sensitive clientele realized reeked of spilled beer and farts!

Hotel Moderne

I'm not sure why, but the image I had of Marseille is vastly different from the reality I'm experiencing. Maybe there's some sort of snobby bias that one has to go to Paris or the French Riviera or Provence to enjoy France -- that Marseille is too gritty. I have to tell you, Marseille is BEAUTIFUL!

It sits on the Mediterranean, west of the French Riviera (so MOST women wear both pieces of their two-piece bathing suits!).

I am staying in the Old Port section of town so the water is only blocks away, and a nice public beach less than a mile -- my runs take me along the water and past this beach and two others, with views of Chateau d'Iff, a former prison and setting for The Count of Monte Cristo. (Unlike the hero of the book, no one ever escaped and lived to tell about it!)

I had an amazing experience my first night here. On the way back from a run, I saw the most incredible building -- massive, old, and beautiful. Turns out, it was the Marseille Opera House, built in the late 1700s, and, as luck would have it, there was to be a performance THAT NIGHT of Le Cid (that's French for El Cid, by the way). A young woman was standing near the back door and when I asked her if it was possible to still get a ticket, she told me they hold back 100 seats for each performance and sell them for 10 Euros (about 14 bucks!) on a first-come-first-served basis. She was first in line and kindly offered to hold my place while I went back to my hotel to clean up. So, on my first night in France, I got to see an opera -- and Rodrigue was most debonaire, I might add!

Now that I am traveling alone, I see this trip as a wonderful challenge. I have no one else to help me figure out what to do and how to do it, where to go or how to get there. Shopping, something I don't usually enjoy, has been a way to do that. I Googled running stores, found one, made a map on my computer with turn-by-turn directions from my hotel, and found it. While there, I got into what turned out to be a humorous conversation about the Newton running shoes I was wearing (they'd heard of them but never seen a pair) where we pantomimed forefoot running and everyone spoke in sentences that combined both languages. From there, I went next door to Madama Zaza's and bought three dresses from a VERY handsome man. "Permittez-moi, Madame," he says as he places his hands on my waist to determine my dress size. He steps back, looks me over, makes the curvy sign with both hands referring to my shape, smiles, and begins selecting dresses for me to try. There was no mirror in the dressing room, so I had to step out each time I wanted to see how one fit, and he was always there to critique. I chose three, omitting his two choices that were "more sexier". I'm beginning to like shopping!

OK -- Off to see what this day has in store!

Fish'n'chips and Guinness have been replaced by Salade Nicoise and Chenin Blanc as I explore local food traditions.