Vacation in Europe:
Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, France
days 16 - 18
After Les Baux, we drove leisurely to Aix-en-Provence. Again, it was late afternoon when we arrived, there was a ton of traffic, and we had a hard time parking. This was really always the worst thing about getting to a new place - trying to park, find a hotel, and relax for a bit. We finally managed to park and walked to the tourist office, 6 or 7 blocks away. It was packed with people, so we found a hotel with this free-standing board. I don't know how to describe this thing, but we saw something similar in a few towns. It is a standing board with a map of the city and various hotels marked on it. Beneath the map is a list of the hotels with addresses, phone numbers, and a button. When you press the button for a hotel, lights on the map show you the route to that hotel. We called 3 or 4 cheap hotels - all booked. We finally found a fairly expensive room at Hotel du Globe, but at least it was fairly close to our car.
Breakfast at the hotel was terrible. The evening before, we'd let the propriétaire talk us into the hotel's breakfast buffet, but it turned out to be a poor excuse for a buffet. After eating, we walked around the huge, bustling market for a long time. It was separated into logical themes, like fruit, vegetables, clothing and other non-edibles, etc. Each section took up several blocks or an entire place. In fact, Aix had more places than any other city I've ever been in. They were everywhere!We left Aix and drove south. We stopped for lunch at a lovely Italian restaurant called L'Origan. It had recently changed owners, and we chatted with the propriétaire for a bit before ordering. I had a wonderful Italian salad (caprese) and the restaurant's signature lasagne. We sat outside under a huge striped tent and laughed at the antics kids at the next table, sitting with at least 6 or 7 adults.
We decided to see if we could spend a day at the beach and so headed to what we thought was the tiny town of Cassis (I looked at the map and arbitrarily chose a town on the beach). It turned out to be a bustling beach town (aka tourist trap). We walked around a little and looked for a hotel, but there was nothing. There was some sort of wine festival going on, which would have been great, but apparently lots of other people thought so too, so we had to move on.
Made it to Marseille and found a room at the hotel right across from the train station. It wasn't very nice, but the location was ideal. We bought our train tickets (this took several hours of waiting), and then dropped the car off at the rental place, which turned out to be a complete disaster. We hadn't realized when we decided to keep the car a few extra days that we were dropping it off on a Saturday night. Of course the office was closed. We found a pay phone and called the office at the airport where we'd rented it to find out what to do. They said no problem, just park it somewhere legally and drop the key in the mailbox.
Easier said than done. We drove back to the car rental place. It was on a two-way street divided by the supports of an overpass, under which there was a line of parking. All of these parking spaces were taken. What I call the office was no more than a driveway across the sidewalk leading to a gate to the car yard. There was no mail box. The only place to park was in the driveway right in front of this gate, which was of course an illegal parking spot. After a heated debate, I convinced my husbnd that we had no choice but to leave the car in that spot and throw the key under the gate, wrapped up in our rental contract, far enough under so that no one could pull it back out with a stick. This was all made worse by the fact that the next day was Sunday, so the office wouldn't be open again for 36 hours, during which the car might have been towed. We spent an anxious few days until we called the rental company and found out that they'd found the keys and car where we left them.
We made it back to the hotel, had a well-deserved drink, and then went into town where we had pizza and French fries at a tiny deli sort of place. The owner was very nice - he chatted with us about life in Marseille, language, and all kinds of other stuff. The street was full of people and we sat and watched for a long time.
After breakfast the next morning, we walked around looking for picnic supplies. Our train didn't leave until 2pm, so when we checked out of the hotel at 11, we had to drag our luggage to the gare and sit there for several hours. We played Scrabble and read, then finally boarded the train.
Next stop: Barcelona Vacation Index
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