Marseille

On Sunday Amanda and I took the train out to the Orly airport in Paris to catch an Easyjet flight to Marseille. Easyjet is this really great airline that flys around Europe for very low prices. The flight from Paris to Marseille for approximately 22 euros or just over $30, super cheap.

The flight only took about one hour or so but I slept the whole way so for me it only took about 5 minutes. I woke up just in time to watch our decent into Marseille, which is located on the Mediterranean sea. The view from the airplane was amazing, you could see all of the islands and how clean the water was. It was similiar to flying into Tampa, Florida. The landscape around Marseille is very similiar to that of San Jose or other other central to southern California town. Very hilly (not mountainous), dry and dead. The plant life is almost identical too.

The Marseille airport is on the far outskirts of town. In order to get to the center of town we needed to take a bus from the airport to the Grand Central station (I don't remember the actual name and I don't feel like looking it up). THe bus drive was great because we got to see the part of town that the school probably did not want us to see (similiar to the tourist zones in Paris). The outskirts of Marseille are poor, the houses are in very shabby condition and the area appeared to be very dirty. If you have spent any time in San Diego or closer to the border of Mexico, that's exactly how it looked. Except that the houses were made of a different material and there were no excess cars in the yards. Everything else, however, was the same. Fences made of anything and everything, tarps used as porch roofs, trash lining the fences of the backyards, Graffitti, etc. etc. I loved it.

When we arrived at the train station we were given the grand treatment. Upon entering the Central Station and Emergency evacuation was called. Horns were blaring and the police and other guards were everyway. By the way French guards are the equivalent of our national guard (not literally but figuratively). They wear fatigues and carry automatic rifles, it can either make you feel more safe or in danger. The train station's alarm was blaring like crazy and all of the shops inside were rushing to close their doors and get the crap out of there. People were almost panicking to get outside of the train station and the Police weren't doing much to calm anyone down.

Luckily we had just entered the train station so we were able to get out quickly. Instead of waiting for the station to reopen we decided to take the Metro. While walking to the Metro we discussed what we thought we really going on in the train station. Our conclusion was either (a) it was a drill or (b) Bomb threat because we had all seen the sniffer dogs and additional Police and ambulances came on the scene within a short amount of time.

We never did find out what happened, but it doesn't really matter. We made it to our aprtment safe and everything was fine. For the rest of the day we just walked around town, got situated in our apartment and prepared for our first day of school. Nothing else exciting happened.