Marseille

Today, Carmel, Claire, and I went left our humble abode to take a bus from the Gare Routière to the bustling big city of Marseille! Don't worry, I did what EVERYONE told me to do and held my bag really tight against me under my arm, so not only did I look like a ridiculous paranoid tool, but I also still have my wallet, so I win. Yeah, that's right, I WIN.
Min "Winner" Yi: 1 Infamous pickpockets of Marseille: 0
The bus dropped us off on this random street on the Northern edge of the city next to a gate and some roadwork. Kind of weird. But with my handy dandy American guide book, we quickly found out where we were and headed straight towards the harbor or "Le Vieux Port" to take a peek. We passed all sorts of small shops for discount shoes, bags, and watches, and also saw the coolest metro/train thing EVER. It looked like it came from the future, especially compared to all of the old buildings that we saw around us. Unfortunately, I don't have photo documentation of that marvelous contraption.
When we finally got to the port, it was so invigorating! I could smell the saltiness of the ocean water, and the harbor was FILLED with boats. And I mean completely filled, I don't even know how they get out of the harbor because they're so closely packed together. On the dock, there were tons of stands selling freshly-caught fish, escargots, shrimp, and shellfish. The buildings were all beautiful, and I noticed that the colors of the apartment buildings are much more diverse than those you'll find up North in France. It's really just how I imagined it, that everything around the Mediterranean Sea is brighter, more colorful, quite frankly, more interesting. The people, even, were more interesting, more diverse. Because Marseille was and is still a bustling port city, it is a major source of cultural diffusion from the trade as well as the immigration that affects the area. I could hear all sorts of other languages, slightly comprehensible dialects of French, lots of slang, a little English. There were people wearing hijabs, traditional North African dress, caftans. It was beautiful. It was refreshing to see something so different and more lively after spending what has almost been two weeks now in the picturesque, tranquil town of Aix-en-Provence.
Now, the awesome thing about Marseille's port is that you can see the various stages of architectural development over time in the bizarre assortment of buildings. There are modern shopping complexes and office buildings, pastel-colored apartment buildings with wooden shutters, flower boxes, and laundry lines, and at the very mouth of the harbor, the old stone fortresses and walls that once protected the Marseillais from invaders. We're really amazing, so we decided to go into one of the fortresses on the southern bank of the harbor.
We didn't get to go inside the fortress because it was gated off and closed for some reason, but we went up a series of stairs and then got an AMAZING view of the city of Marseille, the mountains, and the water that surround it.Afterwards, we were going to go to this really cool basilica that we saw that is perched on top of a hill overlooking Marseille...but it was too far. And it was too hot. And we were tired and dehydrated. So instead, we decided to walk really slowly through the center of the city and take a look around and head towards our lunch location. We saw tons of beautiful buildings, cute alleys, really cool graffiti, and stores filled with amazing sugar confections and pastries from the Maghreb. Here are some examples of things that we saw as we walked around.


For lunch, we decided to go to a little restaurant called "Ivoire Restaurant", which came highly recommended in the guide book (which has proven to be AMAZING. It not only gives good suggestions for things to see, ways to save money and time, but it also gives a lot of great recommendations for food that I have already found to be very very helpful.) So, we decided to listen to "Let's Go: France" and check out this place. It was TINY. Like, tiny. Barely any decorations on the walls except for some weird poster of a woman with palm trees advertising vacations in the Côte d'Ivoire. There was no big sign for the place, just a tiny tiny board that had the name of the restaurant squished in a place where you couldn't even see it. It is owned by someone whom locals refer to as "Maman Afrique" or "Mama Africa". It took a while for the food to come out, and it was just one woman cleaning, cooking, serving, everything...but it was SO worth it. I don't even remember what my dish was called. Something like "Akaké" maybe but it was spiced tomatoes and onions with a kind of tangy sauce with baked chicken and an interesting rice-type grain on the side. SO. GOOD.
Claire and I also decided to try the "jus de gingembre" or "ginger juice". Interesting choice. It was delicious, and at first very refreshing. My guide book had said to watch out for the "jus de gingembre" because it's an aphrodisiac. But as Claire put it, "chocolate's an aphrodisiac, seafood is an aphrodisiac, what the hell". And so she ordered some. It was great, a little sweet, a little spicy. Really delicious. But then, at some point during the meal, I put some hot pepper sauce on my chicken and almost burned my mouth off, and then I felt really weird afterwards when I chugged ginger juice to cool my mouth (bad idea, ginger is spicy, too). After the burn of the pepper was gone, I realized that my head felt a liiiitle bit fuzzy, and my breathing was like kind of shallow..everything that happens when I drink alcohol and I'm getting tipsy. Except it was the ginger juice. The following conversation ensued:
Min: Hey guys, I feel kind of funny.
Claire: ME TOO.
It was the ginger juice. Really really strong ginger has that effect, apparently. Wow. I plan on going back to that restaurant when I'm back in Marseille, but perhaps next time I'll pass on the ginger juice. Now, even though we had eaten WAY too much, we decided to stop somewhere and look at those pastries and sweets from the Maghreb. If you look at the picture of Carmel standing in one of those lovely shops (by the way there are like 230583925898585 million of them in Marseille), you'll see the confection that is an obscene, frightening bright orange color. That's what I bought. Of course.
I don't remember what they're called, something that starts with a z, but they're made of finely ground semolina and completely soaked in honey. Really really really really really sweet. Actually difficult to eat one of them. I had some of one with some tea (sans sugar) and it was still slightly nauseating. Whoo, boy. Better save it for later.
Then, we got back on the bus and came back to our little hometown of Aix-en-Provence. What a lovely excursion :)