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.