Aux armes, citoyens!

Being in the south of France, it seemed only natural to visit the port city of Marseille. One of the guidebooks warned of the dirtiness of Marseille, but considering Paris is also considered dirty, we didn’t think anything of it. Plus, Marseille had to be cool, considering the French National Anthem is called "La Marseillaise". We headed out in search of the waterfront, where we would get a boat out to Chateau d’If. For those of you literary types, you will immediately recognize Chateau d’If as the place where Edmond Dantès was famously imprisoned in Alexandre Dumas’ famous novel “The Count of Monte Cristo.

We made record time to Marseille, mostly because Kevin was driving 180 kph which he told us at the time was 80ish mph, but we later realized was 110! In a Peugeot no less. As we arrived in Marseille, I realized that the guide book was in fact overstating the visual appeal of Marseille. It was a pit! The town was heavily bombed during WWII (due to the fact that, being a port city, it was the embarkation point for a huge number of Jewish and similarly persecuted people. In fact, Victor Lazlo stopped in Marseille shortly before heading to Casablanca in the famous Humphrey Bogart movie. Apparently, the didn’t feel the need to fix most of the city afterwards. To make matters worse, the GPS decided to throw a hissy fit and get us totally turned around. Poor Kevin was a champ though, finally getting us to the waterfront.

Unlike the majority of Marseille, the waterfront was much more picturesque. The mouth of the harbor is dominated by two forts at either end which were being worked on, so we couldn’t walk around. We headed over to the boat launch to find out the time of the next ferry to Chateau d’If, but soon found out that the Chateau was closed for renovation until at least November 2010. We sent Katie up to double check that it was still closed, and alas it was. A wasted trip to Marseille. However, we did find a nice little Proveçal restaurant to have lunch and then headed out.

Luckily, it wasn’t a total wasted trip. Close by to Marseille is the town of Aubagne, a town Katie had been talking about visiting since we booked our trip. Aubagne is birthplace and home of French cinema great Marcel Pagnol. John was very concerned about Pagnol and his American equivalent. He peppered Katie with questions – “is he like Scorsese? James Cameron? George Lucas?” until Katie finally agreed that he was like Woody Allen. Katie got her picture in front of Pagnol’s house

We found this on the street, so naturally, we had to take a picture.

We rounded off the night with a batch of homemade mac and cheese using the mounds of extra pasta from the night before. After I made the batch, which was way too much for 4 of us, there was still pasta left!