Novotel Marseille E Valentine

... Aix...oh, the Brits abroad, mon dieu! Still, best 6€ I've ever spent. We've also been along to the cinema. Embarassingly, it was to see Fame but I'd like to point out how important cinema, and going to the cinema, is to the French. There are at least 3 cinemas in Aix, and there are huge film posters everywhere. 'Le Cezanne', has it's name lit up, and, unlike at home, the seats are like armchairs and there's plenty of leg room. But, like at home, it's bloody ...

Bonjour avec Aix-en-Provence Cherie
Since the last news we have visited the Cote D'Azur spending time at Monte Carlo and Antibes. We stayed near Antibes at a place called Biot and at night you could hear the seals at nearby Marineland - very strange. It was still quite hot and stickey with more mozzies. Monte Carlo was wall to wall money with billions of dollars in boats and cars. Antibes was similar but it had a lovely old town as well.
We arrived ...

... kill two birds with one spoon; it works. Ever the alchemist I go buy a handful of mint leaves in the Arab market; now we’re getting somewhere. I can’t look a pizza in the face anymore, so I close my eyes and savor the flavor.

After missing Rachid Taha last week on my first night in town, and Lura the week before on my last night in Wroclaw, I resolve to catch the Ba Cissoko show tonight. It’s ...

... br>The Saint-Sauveur Cathedral. It was a slightly bizarre mix of the very old and the very new and everything in between. Very old frescoes are visible in one part of the baptismal area, but other parts have been covered with paintings that are only a couple hundred years old. On the altar, the bishop's chair looks like a gilded piece of modern art modified to be a bidet. Also there is a statue of a saint emerging from the back of a dragon who, according to the ...

... yesterday’s popular beach resorts- Acapulco, Brighton Beach, Coney Island- Marseilles is a bit past its prime tourist days, long ago replaced in the popular imagination by places more exotic and more exclusive. But it has weathered the storms better than many others, sandblasted by time and left to acquire a polished sheen naturally. It has none of the stuffy je ne sais quoi of Paris, nor the generic beachiness of Cannes or Nice. Marseilles is not ...

... Capital of Europe." Or something like that. As I understood, the European Union each year selects a different city to serve as its cultural capital for the sake of attracting tourism, and perhaps also for beautifying the Old World (as compared to the West). The buildings and architectural designs on display on the sidewalk panels looked pretty impressive, so given my brief glimpse of Marseilles today, I can only imagine how different the city will look in the near future.

... confused with the dates and the days. About an hour into the trip the ticket inspector comes on board. I hand him my ticket, my passport and my Eurail ticket. He looks at it, looks at me and clips the ticket, and then..... moves on! Whooo hooo score one for Penny. Not only do I get a train on the day I could not get a ticket to, but it is free as I used the same day twice and all I had to do was pay the booking fee of 3 euro. I use my laptop, but ...

... bloods who'd probably used outhouses during childhood. When he could get a word out at all between stifling his grins and muffling his guffaws, he called them 'bidgets.' I'd read Henry Miller so I knew what he was talking about, despite the bad French, but the rest of the class was lost. So we shared a bond there, derriere la scene, united in our imaginary knowledge of the ways of the world, while the peasants ...

Another day in Marseille. It is a really beautiful place once you get into the nicer areas around the water. Went up to the place they call Notre Dame here, it is at the highest point in the city and has amazing views, caught the little tourist train up there with John, the guy I met on the train yesterday, definitely worth paying so as not to have ...

... considering it is famous for its soap, but then again necessity is the mother of invention...) There is grafitti everywhere, in places where you think how on earth did they get up there? The garbagemen seem to be constantly on strike, during the hottest week of the year there were mountains reaching up to the first floor of every apartment building and enough people rummaging through it finding treasure. Every 10 metres or so there is dog poo, the ...