Sat, 11 Oct 2003

author Tim	location the 13:29 Perpignan to Port-Bou train, France
posted 13:46 CEST 15/10/03	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 1 ( all photos )

Into Marseille ( No photos )
Being in separate dorms which we aren't quite prepared for, we only have one alarm clock. We had chosen quite an early time to meet downstairs, breakfast and get on the rails, but Liz didn't show! She wandered in quite a while later, having had not the best night's sleep. Happens now and again, unfortunately.
After our breakfast, we decided to leave Lyon, and hence headed back to the main train station. Discussions the night before had meant that we wanted to spend little time in the middle of France, instead heading for the famous "South of France", on the French Riviera, or Côte d'Azur, to spend quite a bit of time there.
Our journey was through the scenic Rhône Valley, to change trains at a previously-unheard of place called Nimes, where we intended to buy an extra return ticket to Monaco. Most of this went fairly well, although we had to get another train through to Marseille before we could head further east. The annoying thing about having tickets on the French train system is that you have to specify specific times you wish to travel, and in many cases pay suppliments.
We had happily paid the suppliment to travel from Lyon down to Nimes, on one of the trains I had wanted to get on ever since I was a little kid and learnt all about trains of the world. The pride of the French train fleet is the TGV, an ultra-fast way to get across the country. The GPS proved to us that we were infact screaming along at 295km/h, easily the fastest we have ever travelled while still having something joining us to the earth.
By the time the connecting train got us late into Marseille, we only just made it to the next train, where we found other people sitting in our reserved seats and a train number that didn't quite match up. Confused, we chose to break our journey there and changed our reservations to the next morning.
Looking into the great little French Youth Hostel Association guide book, we found that we could get to a HI hostel there with just a simple bus ride. Lonely Planet describes the city as "not in the least bit beautified for the sake of tourists". What an apt description. There was rubbish everywhere, beggars, and generally not much to bring a traveller there at all, except maybe as a stop if you were passing through. It did manage to have such a concentration of kebab shops that at one stage we saw three right next to each other - a feat not achieved even in Istanbul.
After waiting for a while on the busy arterial la Canebière, the bus arrived, and we somehow managed to get a ticket from the driver, and it wound its way towards Auberge de Jeunesse Château de Bois Luzy, in a neighbourhood about 5km out of town. The place itself is rather interesting, being in an old castle, rather run down, but that is part of its character. We had to lug our bags there quite a way from the bus stop, but it was all worked out in the end.
We couldn't quite check in yet, so I went for a wander back down to the shops to gather some foodstuffs for dinner, communicating with the shop-staff how I do not know, and coming away with a couple of cake things, some pasta sauce and a two euro bottle of wine. Not a bad haul really.
Paying up the tiny suppliment for a double room (far better than being split apart, although when they say double room here, they mean twin), we dumped our bags and set about dinner.
Saying that the place had a kitchen was a little over-kind. Infact it had gas burners that wouldn't have passed safety standards in 1950 (which at least boiled the water in about two minutes flat), and a set of cutlery, crockery and pots and pans that were extremely close to useless. We salvaged one glass to drink out of, pulled a handle off one of the pots (which actually made it better), and enjoyed a good meal.
We weren't sure where to sit at first because there was a huge conference of people all getting together and speaking rapid French (not suprising, I guess). We have no idea what it was all about, but after a while we did notice that there was not one male among them, a fact I found a little dis-concerting as I ate my dinner, the only male in the room of a hundered or so.
That all done, we continued our habit of retiring early to wake and get on the move as soon as possible.

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