Book 4 of the Chronicles of France

Ah... Hope you guys are not bored with the stuff yet. We are only at Day 6!! 4 more days to go!!

Day 6 of the France trip.

After checking out of the hotel in Nice, we boarded a train to Cannes, which is quite near to Nice. Everyone knows Cannes as the film festival place and honestly, I think Cannes is really ONLY a film place... In short, it was like Nice. Except that there was no old town for us to explore. Thus, we headed to the next best alternative after exploring the handful of touristy destinations the guide had for us.

And that brought us to Sainte-Marguerite Island.

The largest of the Lerins Islands, Sainte-Marguerite Island is better known for the fort that is there. Fort Royal is most famous for the prison that held the so-called Man in the Iron Mask. It mainly served as a prison for the royalty in medieval times and had seen many famous prisoners in its time.

Well, the island is pretty enough. From what I read, there was a lot of natural attractions on that island. It was better known for its natural attractions than the Fort. We didn't really explore the island because we had about 2 hours to explore the place before the last ferry leaves, so we only went to the Fort and the museum that was attached to it.

The Fort seemed pretty small, only about 2 stories tall and only the first floor was open for public. There were some scary murals done within the prison by some artist who voluntarily locked himself in to search for his inner muse. Also, there were exhibits that speculate the identity of the man in the iron mask but there wasn't anything concrete. The fort once held religious prisoners too, and so there were some interesting accounts of these christian pastors on exhibit.

The island was almost deserted. There were hardly anyone in the museum with us and that added to the scary factor of the Fort. But once you head out into the sun, the island would feel peaceful, almost idyllic.

For the most part of the remaining evening, there was nothing much worthy to say, except that we came into this nice Turking fast food restaurant that sold cheap (well, relatively cheap) food. The nice man behind the counter, after knowing that (and I quote my friend) "Je suis etudiante, je n'ai pas d'argent" or I am a student, I don't have any money, he very kindly gave us a jug of water (the others didn't seem to have one) and even offered me a dollar discount off my meal (mine was 6 euros, the others ordered 5 euros meal). How nice of him right! So people, next time you visit Cannes, go to the Turkish Kebab place that's near the fresh food market and patronise that shop. Just because he is a nice guy!

End of Day 6

Day 7.....

We head out of Cannes and to Marseille on Day 7. However, because we didn't check that the bus to the train station only arrives every 30 minutes, we were late for our train. After some exasperating conversations with the train ticket operators, we managed to secure tickets to the next train tht heads to Marseille free of charge, BUT at 3 hours later. So, with 3 hours to spare, we decided to hit the streets and do a little exploring around the city, the part that we haven't explored before. So, we sat in the sun and just lazed around the beach like a bunch of people on vacation, soaking up the sun in the freezing afternoon breeze. (Freezing? Yes, it was definitely freezing. It was sunny but cold because of the howling gales there.)

Anyway, three hours later, we were on our way to Marseille. A hiccup of the train service along the way saw us running after a bus to take us to Marseille after the train mysteriously stopped and we were ushered out of the train. Ah, my back was singing after the run. Singing with pain, that is.

I instantly took a dislike to Marseille after that.

For one, Marseille was almost as dirty as Paris. The people also seemed unfriendly and, although I know we should be used to it by now, they stare at us a lot. Like openly stare. I guess they don't really have a lot of tourists coming there huh...

Anyway, we covered 2 main "tourist destinations" in Marseille that afternoon. A copy of the Arc de Triomphe that was in Marseille and a block of flats that was special because it had each appartment (??) individually designed and it housed the offices for architects, a hotel and appartments that were for people to live in. An interesting appartment.

Since we took such a long time in getting to Marseille, we only had a limited time to explore before heading to the hotel for the night.

Oh ya, speaking of hotels, the one at Marseille was really one of the worst I've stayed in. It can almost rival the hotel that I stayed in in Hong Kong. It has a weird opening time for their reception (only in the mornings and evenings) and there is only one toilet for the whole floor to share. That meant going out of the room for the toilet but the shower is attached to the room (individual showers). And when one goes to the toilet, the auto light function might cause the corridor light to switch off by itself after some time and so you would have to grope your way back to the room. Argh, I can grouse about the hotel for another half page, but I don't think it would be polite...

Back to the story then...

On our way to the hotel, we stopped by a boulangerie (a bakery that sells a whole range of baked goods) for dinner. The shop owner was a very nice lady. We had a couple of incidents during dinner but she was very nice and cool about it. Before we left, she even gave us some pastries, free of charge! What a heart!

Ok, so I guess Marseille wasn't that bad after all...

That night, or the following morning, at about 6 in the morning, I felt the earth move. It was very slight, but I knew it was an earthquake, thanks to the stupid article that my friend happened to see on their local newspaper. The paper said that Marseille was near a faultline and was pretty likely to have an earthquake that was the aftermath of the one in Aquila in Italy. If I had not seen that article, I would have been oblivious to it and went back to sleep, assuming that it was just some fat guy rolling around in his sleep upstairs...

Nah, it's actually pretty unlikely that I would think that way since it really felt like the earth suddenly became like a wave, the whole hotel was like vibrating. And so, I could not get back to sleep, afraid that the stupid earthquake might wake someone up and they might start panicking and cause the others to panic. Sigh... Thankfully, they slept through it like 3 logs and hardly felt a thing. Ah well, I'm just thankful that it wasn't serious.

End of Day 7 of the France Trip.

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