Adios Barcelona and Bonjour Marseille
I may be the only person I know who has been to Barcelona who didn’t absolutely love it so when it was time to leave yesterday to return to France, I was not unhappy despite how I might look in this picture. I was working on 3 hours of sleep and a little bit nervous about the drive to Marseille.
I hopped in the car, turned on a TWIT (this week in tech) podcast, set the nav system for Perpignan to just get out of town and followed other cars closely to make sure that I didn’t accidentally turn into a one way street. (There are a lot of one way streets and weird circle things in Barcelona) It felt good to be driving knowing I would soon be in France. Fortunately I had fueled up before I got into Spain and didn’t have to worry about any fuel stop for a few hours.
As I passed through France and got to the first pay station where I needed to take a ticket, I noticed the gendarmerie and stopped when one of them flagged me down. He was absolutely lovely and fortunately spoke English. He flipped through my passport and asked where I was going, why, and where I was coming from. And then he said ‘merci, bonne journée’ and I was off again. I left wondering if this is how it is or if they were looking for someone.
I stopped at the first gas station in France and was able to figure out the gas thing on my own and even figured out how to get a coffee from the machine that required that you put in monnaie (coins) to get the coffee. No problem. I bought a sandwich, some Pringles and a Badoit and took a few pictures of Mont Blanc before getting back on the road.
I put Marseille into my nav system to see how far I had to go and this is where things went a bit awry. There were three Marseille/Marseilles options so I chose the one that sounded right and it showed that I had 6.5 hours to drive. It was about 11 AM and it had me arriving at 5:30 PM. While this arrival time was reasonable and fine for me, I had wanted to stop along the way to see some sites and was disappointed this wasn’t going to happen. At the same time, I had originally estimated that I had a total of a 5 hour drive and couldn’t figure out how I had made such a big error. But I ignored that niggling feeling and got back on the freeway.
When I turned north away of Montpellier I realized that perhaps I had made a mistake so I found a small town that I was hoping had a café to get some coffee and decided to check Google Maps and realized that I was in fact going the wrong direction. So after a few turns around the town with no café in sight, I got out of the car to get some air and take a few pictures before picking the correct Marseille and heading back towards Montpellier. (And of course post the pics on FB to let my husband/friends/parents know that I was still alive and where I was)
There is something quite exhilarating and a bit nerve wracking to realize that if I got into an accident that no one knew where I might be so it could be a few days before anyone realized I was missing. That was a thought I quickly pushed out of my mind, by the way.
I got to Montpellier and decided that despite the time (at this point it was close to 3 PM but I only had about 2 hours left per the nav system) that I wanted to see something (not just from the freeway) on my drive. I followed the signs to Centre Ville, found a car park (thank goodness the car is small because the underground car parks are scary narrow when you are going down and down and down…the ceilings are low as well), and got out to walk. What a beautiful city.
In order to shake of my sleepiness I turned around and walked towards a large, open space. The sky was gorgeous and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect.
Part of me wanted to race back to the car and keep going but another part told me to wander. I chose the latter after walking towards this monument. I have no idea what it is. (the book on France with info on all of these cities is dead weight in my suitcase)
I meandered from here back towards my car (through the arch) in search of a café to have an espresso. I took turns down narrow streets and even went into a church that was being renovated but for the time being houses their modern art museum. Talk about some odd art. The artist was pretty fixated on Scarlett Johanson and was making some sort of political statement I couldn’t understand.
The bicycles attached to the walls throughout the city were much more my speed in terms of artistic expression.
I tried to figure out how to get into the parking garage and couldn’t so I overcame my trepidation (irrational I know) about going to an actual café for coffee. This isn’t as easy as one might think. Do you just sit or ask to be seated? If I ask to be seated, I must do it in French and risk not understanding their response. Desire to not be limited my fear won out so I said I was one person for espresso (une personne pour an espresso) and sat down at one of the available tables.
I enjoyed my espresso in a small square in Montpelier and after using the restroom (another motivating factor to find a café) I found the elevator to the car park, paid for the parking, and proceeded to exit the car park from the depths of the earth and attempt to head out of town.
I say attempt because apparently I can’t count and I am surprised the nav system doesn’t yell at me for being an idiot at roundabouts. The real question is whether the entrance to another car park counts as an exit off the roundabout or not. I still don’t know the answer to this but .80 euros later after driving into and out of yet another car park, I managed to figure out how to get back on the road, exit Montpelier and proceed towards Marseille.
The rest of the drive was uneventful and I was much relieved to see the Mediterranean as I drove past the Marseille airport. Even though it has been a year and a half since I was last in Marseille and I’ve only been this way once, I felt like I was coming home. I knew that the streets around the hotel were a bit funky and drove around the block before I stumbled upon a car park right behind the hotel and decided to park and walk to the hotel. I failed to read the sign that allowed cars to access the street behind the hotel to valet the car. And I didn’t quite understand the signs as I drove into the car park and decided to go down to the -5 floor and park. Hopefully my car is still there tomorrow when I go to leave. If not I have evidence of where it last was.
I am glad I chose a hotel I am familiar with for this part of the trip because I arrived tired and ready for a glass of something and the hotel is quite beautiful and the people very welcoming (and they tolerated my French and even made a few corrections which I appreciated).
After dropping my bags, I headed down one floor to the bar, set up camp at a small table, ordered a coupe de champagne, opened up my laptop and looked out upon this with a great, big, happy sigh.
It is amazing how even having one experience some place make it comfortable and accessible. I really am much better at things the second time around…the uncertainty of the unknown makes me a bit anxious until I have figured something out.
The challenge at this point was that it was 6:30 PM and I needed to be at a business dinner at another hotel nearby at 10 PM. After two glasses of champagne (because one really isn’t enough) and a cheese plate, I headed back up to my room, checked out the view from there and decided that my eyelids needed a bit of close study too.
I made it to the dinner and met some very nice people, had a great time, and was very happy to come back to my room to get a few hours of sleep before I needed to be at the function today. But only after having breakfast in front of this beautiful view. Another beautiful day in Marseille.
