Tag Archives: Marseille

Aug16

A train to Switzerland – From Marseille to Zermatt

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Thursday, 18-July-2024


I dropped the rental off back at Marseille airport, hitched a taxi to the train station, and braced myself for my longest train ride of the trip.

I had about nine hours ahead of me – my longest “commute” of this adventure, with the most layovers and the highest opportunity for things to go wrong. They already had started to, in actuality, earlier in the month when flash-floods had hit Zermatt and partially washed out one of the train lines that I was scheduled to take. I was anxious, but optimistic. I’d made it this far, the trains so far had been quite good, and I was confident I’d make it through the trials and travails.


I started at the ticket booth. I’d bought reservations on as many trains as I could, of course, but many trains didn’t accept reservations… which is where my Eurail pass would come in. In theory it would cover me for everything, but I still wanted to make sure. I did, thankfully, and after waiting in line for nearly 30min to talk to an information staff member I was able to confirm that my pass covered everything and that I would be good to go.

I had breakfast, hauled my bags onto the train once it arrived, and left Marseille behind.



The rides went fairly smoothly at first. I was able to find a seat, and the train made its way toward Switzerland.

Soon enough, though, I hit a hurdle – the conductor wouldn’t accept my Eurail pass. I couldn’t say whether it was the language barrier or what, but after 5min of trying to understand why my pass wasn’t good (which the info people had confirmed it was), I was given a choice – pay an extra $98 for a ticket, or get off at the next stop with a fine for riding without a ticket.

I paid, of course, and was able to make my way to the next station.

From Marseille, to Geneva.
From Geneva, to Visp.
From Visp, a bus to Täsch.
From Täsch, a cog railway to Zermatt.


In Geneva, I dove into the pass a little bit more. I found out how to set up the App to show a QR code, which apparently was what the first conductor had wanted… but hadn’t explained to me.

I had some lunch, too, and added a note into my calendar to contest the charge on my credit card.

I hopped the next train, then the next bus, and then finally the cog railway.


I stared in awe at the cliffs, as the granite slowly rose out of the ground as our elevation rose.

I arrived in Zermatt, and simply goggled at the Matterhorn before happily making my way to my home for the next few days.

Aug11

A boat tour of Les Calanques

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Thursday, 11-July-2024



Cassis is, in no uncertain terms, a tourist town. It is also, however, a seaside town… in equally firm terms.

With that in mind, we took a sea-tour of Les Calanques, the French version of Fjords.


It started out early on a Thursday – as a general rule, I’ve avoided getting up early on this adventure… but the opportunity to do the big tour (all nine Calanques over nearly 3hrs) was far too awesome to pass up. Adding to the challenge, though, was the fact that we hadn’t been able to get tickets the previous day, and so the morning found us having a light snack and then quickly heading into town to queue up in line to pick up the tickets.

We weren’t alone in line, but thankfully it went quickly. A quick conversation in broken French and confused English, then a short walk to the boat, and then… we were casting off the lines, and setting off into the Park!



Sort of like hiking, there’s not too much for me to describe here… I mean, we ooohh’d and aahh’d, the captain made announcements in French, and we looked at our English translations. We saw gorgeous sea cliffs, amazing harbors and beaches, passed and were passed by countless other cool looking boats.

It was a glorious few hours, no doubt, made thankfully quite enjoyable by the anti-nausea medications that I’d taken earlier. We had some small snacks and drinks that we’d brought along, but for the most part just focused on the scenery. It was simply lovely, and I 100% recommend it for anyone who finds themselves in Cassis or Marseille.



Of kind of interesting note, there were a few cool posters up about and around the boat we were on… including two old photos of Cassis Harbor, and one very interesting one discussing an underwater cave that was discovered to house 27,000 year old paintings!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosquer_Cave

Aug6

A car accident in France

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Sunday, 07-July-2024


On the drive home from picking my Mom and Steve up from the airport, a challenging situation arose.

As the title suggests, I got in a car accident.

I’d rented a car, since Cassis is a good ways from Marseille and we were considering taking some day trips into central France. I wasn’t too worried about it – France is a bit crazy with their driving (everyone is training to be an F1 racer. EVERYONE.) but they’re fairly predictable… at least in my opinion. And, frankly, I was confident – I’d driven in France and Spain before, and come out from it none the worse for wear.


I won’t include photos here, because car accident, but understand that it was thankfully quite simple and minor. It took a while to deal with, of course, but there wasn’t any blood and both vehicles seemed to work perfectly fine afterward. I also won’t include details here, since there was a police report… and I’ll let them stick to the official details.

Instead, the point of this post is to walk through what I did, and how I did it, during the parts that happened after the vehicles stopped moving.


Mainly, I shut up.

See, I don’t speak fluent (or conversational) French. Because of that, heated communication in an emotional time isn’t an ideal situation or decision. So, I shut up.

I moved the car out of the way, and let people do their thing. A car stopped to help, the police arrived, and we used Google Translate when necessary. I shut up. I was ignored, which isn’t pleasant… but far preferable to the alternative of being thrown off the side of the road by over-energetic bystanders who are sick of tourists.

I answered the questions posed, and kept the extra details to a minimum. And, 90min later, we were back on the road.

It wasn’t pleasant, and definitely took me a few days to fully recover from… but I’m okay with that. It happened, and we were able to move on from it. That, at the end of the day, is the only important part.