Well I’m sure you’re all wondering what happened after I left you last. I was on the train to Lyon, hoping that I’d have a bed at the only hostel in town… don’t panic, everything worked out. It was surprisingly easy to get to the hostel, a bus, then a cable car up the hill to the little town at the top. I got there in the morning, so I had the day to explore the city. Lyon is one of my favourites so far, very beautiful. The main part of the city has two rivers running through it and then there is a rocky hill behind it – where I was staying. It was quite small, easy to get around.
That afternoon, I met Marchello (Italian) and Lai (Aussie) that were also staying at the hostel, and we found this great little bar down a small cobblestone alley where we had a couple of drinks. We somehow got onto the topic of relationships, and found out that Marchello is currently seeing three women and because he still lives at his parents place (he’s 28) he has to “entertain” them in interesting places. Woman #1 – lives out of home, so its at her place, woman #2 – has a car (I hope its not a mini), and woman #3 – has neither of these things, so they have to book a hotel for the night (apparently he pays). Very hilarious conversation with stilted English!
Lai and I had dinner together and I had a great duck dish, and she had a raw beef mince stack thing. I tried it… not my thing (how do you not get food poisoning from that?).
The next day I walked to the top of the hill, where there were some ancient Roman ruins. It was pretty cool to see, they had recovered two theatres (among other things) and it was set up for an upcoming opera using the original seats etc. After wandering through there, I visited another cathedral – it was beautiful! Nothing like what I’ve seen so far, it was a white building that had ornate mosaics on the walls. The grounds it was on also had a fantastic view of the city.
After my small morning adventure, I made my way back to the train station – only one night in Lyon. The same bus driver took me back to the station and we had a conversation about how he was my own personal driver, he was quite cute and young for a bus driver!
Then the train onto Marseilles (pronounced Marsay – it took me a while to get that). The first thing I noticed about Marseilles was that it was a completely different France to what I had seen so far. It was much grittier, it looked like a poorer city, with far more graffiti than what I had seen so far. I also found out that the hostel was so far out of the city, it wasn’t on the map! It took a metro and a bus to get to – and I only managed to get there because a Canadian couple (who spoke fluent French) were also at the bus stop, and they were staying right by where I was.
I finally got to the hostel, and found that the “reception” was actually a couch in the living area – where I later found out that the owner and his brother also sleep on at night, and sit on all day (the brother wasn’t wearing pants either, just white jocks, looking up loveinasia.com on his laptop). My room was on the terrace up two makeshift staircases, and it consisted of two double mattresses on the floor – I was to share a bed with one of the girls already there! Now this doesn’t really bother me, but I found it quite hilarious! The fantastic upside of the place was that it was incredibly social. I think I met just about everyone that was staying there, and everyone was chatty and friendly.
I decided the first thing I wanted to do was make my way to the beach. After three weeks without a beach, I was starting to crave it. It took over an hour to walk to, and it was probably the worst beach I’ve ever been to, but it was fantastic! I was so excited to be on the beach, even though it was really windy and the water had a smell suspiciously like sewage. By the time I got back, it was about 9pm, and the party was just starting on the terrace. Everyone had a bottle of wine, and I had a great time learning everyone’s stories and talking lots of shit.
The next morning, a crew got together for what our host told us was a “beach hike”. We gathered supplies (picnic lunch and water) and caught a bus to Cassis (about 40mins away) at 9am. We had a map from the owner which we called the “treasure map” because it was basically a coastline and a walking track marked, and that was about it. We stopped at the beach in town and enjoyed the freezing water and giant pebble beach. Cassis was a beautiful little beach town, and the idea was that we would do a six hour walk around the coast back to Marseilles. We started the walk at about 11.30am, and we lost a pair as soon as we found a little “nudist beach” on a rock over the water. The two Swedish guys stayed there for the day we found out, and we kept on.
The landscape was amazing… but we had no idea what we were in for.
After walking along the road for a half hour or so, we came across a carpark that looked out across the water, a thin port – but how do we get across? Turns out we walk a half hour around it! By this time we discovered there was a proper walking track marked (if you call a splash of paint on a rock marked). We made our way along the track, the sun was fierce and I now knew why we were told to bring 4 litres of water each! The track started to become a steep incline and quite rocky. We managed to get to the top, and enjoyed the view until we realized that we now had to go down an even steeper and rougher track into the rocky valley!
With a heavy side bag, the track was quite a challenge in parts. It was really steep and there were rocks on the track that were really slippery, I managed to only slip once when I was sliding myself down, so I thought I did quite well. Haha. Once we got to the bottom, the only track we could see went straight back up the valley! But we spoke to another hiker and they told us there was a Calanque beach within the valley, sweet.
It was probably the most amazing and different beach I’ve ever seen in my life! The water was so clear and a beautiful blue, sheer rock faces on either side and a pebble beach that we quickly dumped out stuff on and ran into the water. It was freezing, but after the walk there, it was refreshing. We had our picnic and I managed to find a shady spot to escape the sun which was even better. It was about 2pm I think, it took us 2.5 hours just to get to this point, and judging from the map we were only a third of the way!
We eventually got ourselves moving again, and one of the two other girls on the trip was already whinging. She had only brought one small bottle of water, so she’d already gone through it. I filled hers up with my water (I had brought 3L and it was so heavy, so it was annoying to carry it that far and then give it to someone else). We kept on and then we found a split in the path. We were sitting there trying to decipher the “treasure map” – I thought it was to the left to keep going along the coast, and we were going to head in that direction when we met a couple coming from the path straight ahead. We spoke to them and they really put a downer on the group. They said that Marseilles was really far away, that if we went straight ahead we would get to a road, that we should head back to Cassis instead. So I was outvoted and we made our way straight, back up the hill. After an hour I think, we made it to a carpark where we found another older couple who had a real map that we could look at. Turns out I was right (I so felt like rubbing it in) and we’d walked up to a small town, instead of walking left, so we were miles from the coast. The couple offered to take 3 people back to Cassis, and the other two girls and one of the guys took it. So there was four of us left. We decided that it was pointless continuing to Marseilles because we’d have to double back before we could keep going, so essentially we did a triangle, and walked back to Cassis. Luckily shortly along the path we came across a ranger’s house and we managed to steal some water from the tap outside, we were seriously running low. The sign said only 5km, but it was definitely lying… we were walking for hours. By the time we got back to town it was 7pm! And we had just missed the last bus back to Marseilles.
So to add to the misadventure, we had to catch a bus, a train, a metro and then another bus back to the hostel. By the time we got back it was past 9pm, and we were exhausted! That beach though, and the adventure made the pain worth it we decided. The others were glad to see us home, it was dark so they were worried, and the whole hostel heard about our tale which was pretty funny. I should have gone to bed, but I had bought a bottle of wine and there was another party going on outside my door, so I joined them.
The next day I was exhausted, so I checked out and made it to the train station. I wasn’t feeling well, so I stayed at the station waiting. After waiting 2 hours for the train, it was cancelled! So I had to wait another hour. If I had known that, I would have definitely had time to check out the city – I never got around to it, which was a bit disappointing.
So then onto Nice…
xoxo
photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020933&id=219300161&l=4fa11ee761
