(modern art museum)

(Kunnebulle (sp?)—Swedish cinnamon roll. really tasty.)

(Café we went to 4 days in a row to Fika. also, home of the cinnamon roll seen above.)

(island of Skeppsholmen.)

(just something that I thought was funny.)

Marseille

As mentioned, I went to Marseille two weekends ago with my friends from the program Chris and Ryan. We took the TGV—the high speed train of which the French are very proud—down Friday and returned on Monday afternoon. Our hostel, called London Connection despite the fact that the owners were definitely not from Britain, was not exactly the Ritz-Carlton. In fact, it might have actually been the crappiest hostel I've ever stayed in. It's possible that the owners, who slept in the same room as us, might have illegally turned a two or three person apartment into a 25-person hostel. (Luckily, however, the internet reviews that said the hostel was infested with bed bugs proved untrue.) We did not spend much time at the hostel.

The weather was absolutely beautiful—about 70 degrees and sunny—and thus we spent a ton of time walking around and sitting at café terraces. Despite a phenomenal location, Marseille isn't as touristy as you'd think. It's actually pretty gritty and dirty. The city also seems really diverse, which was cool. (One of my friend's host mom warned us that the Arabs could "descend" at any time. This never seemed to be a problem.)

One day we took a 30-minute bus to nearby Aix-en-Provence, where we spent a lovely afternoon and evening walking around with another friend from the program who has an apartment there.

Below are some pictures from the trip:

An old guy cuttin' up some fish.

A French stereotype

Marseille as seen from the Old Port—it's the oldest port in Europe, in fact—with Notre Dame de la Garde on top of the big hill.

View from Notre Dame de la Garde.

Our lovely hostel—this plaque was our only indication as to where it was. Enlarge this image to see how sketchy our hostel was.

A view from our boat tour.

A calanque, or small-rocky-island-thing, off the coast.

My two travel buddies walking dramatically into the sunset. The arch is a WWI memorial.

Notre Dame de la Garde—a really colorful and, I thought, beautiful church perched atop a big hill overlooking Marseille.

Creepy Ad

I just got back tonight from a wonderful vacation in Stockholm. Before I blog about that, however, I wanted to mention a creepy ad that recently went up all over Paris and Marseille. It features two middle-aged men—who are possibly well known and probably pedophiles—making faces that make me uncomfortable. Apparently this is supposed to make you want to buy car insurance.

Marseille was a riot, literally

I just got back from a fun weekend in Marseille with two friends. Things got a little intense, however, when the soccer match between Marseille and Paris was postponed at the last minute and people started rioting. Unfortunately we were on a boat tour during the incident and did not get to witness/participate.

(I leave tonight for Stockholm but will devote an extensive blog post to my travels when I get back.)

The 13th

I thought I'd dedicate a post to the 13th arrondissement, a part of Paris that is not very well known and is currently going through a ton of development. ( My French University, Paris 7, is in the 13th and thus I've spent a good amount of time there. ) As you can see from some of the pictures, the 13th is full of pretty modern-looking apartment buildings and doesn't exactly look like story-book Paris. Also in the 13th is the Biblioteque François Mitterand, a national library that hosts talks and exhibits and a foresty courtyard. I'm not sure how the French feel about the four buildings—which are supposed to represent open books—but I really like them. All in all, I really like the area.