Zach Vineyard

Grammar a little better, still, kinda winging it..

————–

I’m writing this from our hotel in Marseilles, after they have just won the national soccer championship. The main rally is right under our window and I feel something akin to a war correspondent.  It’s 4:00 pm here but something tells me that they are going to be going on long into the night.

I don’t even think that a marathon would have prepared us for the amount of exertion that we have been, well exerting. We’ve been walking miles a day with 30 pound backpacks full of equipment, and this whole time we thought we were traveling light? We could have taken taxis everywhere, but then we would never have seen the Parisian streets or experienced walking up on the museum of Rodin and military hospital that is freaking amazing out of nowhere.

We made it to the effiel tower at  about 9 in the morning on the east lawn. It was perfect we had the perfect shot, what wasn’t so perfect? My hair and outfit. Nowhere fit for commercial photography or even a great picture! I had to use hairspray to try to calm my hair down and instead with the trek and the wind by the time we arrived I looked like a wild man. So be it.

I’m pretty sure that we got at least one decent one, per traveler.

The tower of Eiffel is much bigger than you think it is, its dizzying to look at and is a sight to behold. It is also jam backed with tourists waiting to go up on line. We walked underneath and I got a picture of me touching one of the bases, but we decided that we would rather see the arc de triumph than wait two hours to get up.

The entire time that we are at the major sights there is a bunch of peddlers pushing tiny effil towers of different metals. They were laid back at the lourve but here they were insistent that we have one. I got tired of it and asked Dan how to say, “oh, for free?” in French. Next time a guy came up I said it and it worked like a charm, the guy got frustrated and just left.

I still wouldn’t recommend doing it, but it worked in this case.

We had to find a bench as we were dead tired, and just a tad lost. There was like 7 different ways we could have gone, but the way we went ending up being the local market. It was awesome! everything fresh and different, and what I noticed was that the people selling the fresh fish or meat or bread, weren’t just sellers but the producers of the items being sold, so they were proud and adamant about their products.

Dan got some strawberries from France, that were for the first time in my life the color strawberry and not red. Delicious.

I purchased these huge bottles of coca cola and coca cola light and we had lunch under the Arch de Triumph. War would suck, but marching off under and then returning victorious under the arch would be an amazing feeling none the less.

We then walked  down the champs de Elysee, one word,”posh spice”. lots of shopping, We made it down to the trees and Dan got a handfull of sand to take home.

We made it to the Luxor obelisk, and thought that it was cool, and then we moved on. It wasn’t till we were on the train to Marseille that I read that it was the location that 1,100 people were beheaded, plus Marie Antoinette and the King. I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time.

The gardens were green squares with sculptures in the middle. This is all I can remember because I was so tired by this time. my feet were exhausted.

We passed the lourve again, and on the way home we walked over the river siene. I got a little painting from an artist of the arch de triumph and then a picture with him.

We headed back and Dan got an old book from the most ecletic man I ever saw, He had a tiny shop and the books were piled in stacks, but he knew were every book was by heart. I had to get out because I was feeling claustrophobic, and just a tad unwelcome.

We tried to rest for a few minutes before we went out. Dan wanted a real meal in Paris, but everywhere we went was closed for lunch. They take a rest in the middle of the day, and then open back up to go late into the night. After the third attempt we just got more kababs, and vowed to go out later that night.

Didn’t happen

Once our heads laid down, we didn’t even go out for more kababs, luckily I learned from previous nights and stashed baguettes around the hotel room. So we didn’t go hungry when we woke up at 2 in the morning.

We left for Marseilles at 5:20 and tried to take the metro, yeah that didn’t happen either. You need a pass and a badass attitude to ride that with seedy characters that early.

We were going to walk it, but Dan waved down a taxi, and it was cheaper just to take the taxi then the metro? go figure, it was also the first time I’ve been in a mercedes? go figure.

15 minutes later we were at the the terminal and Dan told the taxi driver to keep the change, the driver got out helped us with our luggage and bid us a bon voyage!

3 hours later were in Marseilles, the day after they win the National Soccer Championship. It’s akin to winning the super bowl, I’ve been told, but we meet three other expatriate travelers who are stuck because there is no train tickets out available.

And guess where our hotel is? right at the focal point of the celebration, we actualy saw ourselves (or our hotel) on tv later that night. It was our hotel and people were standing in an apartment on our floor looking out, at the same time that we were, and so the odds are very high that it was us.

The hotel is ollllllld! there have been upgrades, but you can tell that its a remodel from some old mansion, as the ceiling is like 20 feet high, and they split it into 5 different rooms. What really makes it old is the plumbing as there were high winds that made the plumbing back track a little and now everything smells like smoke bombs.

You get use to it.

Now Dan is videoing the sunrise as I’m typing this up.

next Baguettes, with a dream of more kebabs…

Celebration from our hotel room