We had planned to go to Nice today, but the weather was awful, so we decided a rainy day would be a bad choice for spending on the coast. We visited Colette for a little while in the morning and then we walked to the bus station in the afternoon to take a bus to Marseille. Even though I am only 20 minutes from Marseille, I had never yet been there, so it was new for both of us. So far I'd been showing him everything around France, but now we got to explore something together, which was fun. But it was tough exploring, because it was so cold and windy. We walked along the old port and we found a beach so he could finally see the Mediterranean Sea, but the water looked rough and monstrous and charcoal gray under the pouring rain with the wind forcing all around. The wind turned our umbrella inside-out, and we walked wet and cold back to the port. We climbed up the fort (Fort Nicholas? I'm probably wrong) and we could see around us for a long distance...but all we could see was grey and rain. We walked back up the port, sort of hungry, and stopped at an Indian restaurant called Jaipur. Jaipur was one of the towns that Chuck studied in last summer in India, and so we decided that's where we wanted to eat. But it looked closed. We tried walking in but it was dark and no one answered our "Bonjour?". I tried to tell him we were much too early for a French dinner at only 6:30. Finally someone came out and turned on the lights and sat us. We ordered mango juice (fresh squeezed and so so so delicious) and a sampler plate of all kinds of different Indian dishes. Chuck said one thing he would come away from France with is the appreciation for the whole ceremony of a meal here--how it's more than just eating, it's about spending time with your family or loved ones for a while each day, and the food is secondary.
It was still raining when we were done, but we still walked through the streets exploring. We started heading toward the bus stop as the bus was pulling away. We ran three blocks to catch it in the rain and we nearly missed it, calling after it a little bit before it stopped and we got in! It was an exhillerating run at the end of our evening.
