Day 7 - Marseille

Sorry it's been so long, computers haven't been too accessible lately, and time hasn't permitted a search for one.

In the past couple of days, we left Madrid, stayed in Barcelona for a night, and yesterday we arrived in Marseille. Our last day in Madrid was great; we walked all over the city and hit a couple eateries from time to time when we got hungry. During the day, we spent a lot of time in a beautiful botanical garden. In the nighttime, San Isidro started to pick up, and outdoor concerts started sprouting in several locations. The most popular thing to do as sky grew darker was to hang out in little pockets around the city and drink with friends. I guess the police turned a blind eye for the holiday. While hanging out in one of the town squares, we met some Americans and a few Spaniards, and ended up hanging out with them until around 4 or 5am - another late night.

The next day (two days ago), we took a train to Barcelona. The ride was great; the tracks were surrounded with various beautiful landscapes on either side. Once in Barcelona, we needed to take the metro to get to our hostel, but before that, we wanted to check out a famous building called Sagrada Familia which was awesome. When we got back on the metro though, we had our first Eurotrip mishap; I got pick pocketed out of 70€, so that bummed me out a little bit for awhile. After we checked in to our hostel, we hit the beach for a couple of hours and tossed the disc around. During the night, we walked around and experienced the rave that is celebrating a soccer game home team win. The streets were alive, but most places were closed so there wasn't much to do, so we decided to go to bed early and catch an early train to Marseille.

Last night we got in to Marseille around 7pm, checked in to our room, went to a local food shop, bought some cheese, bread, and wine, and then went to the beach and watched the sunset. It was incredible; we were surrounded by water and mountains, complete with a sunset. Afterwards, we went to get some pizza and tuned in for an early night.

This morning, we woke up early so that we could get out to Les Calanques and do some hiking and swimming. This part of Marseille truly was the most beautiful scenery I've seen so far in Europe, and possibly in my life. We climbed a couple of peaks, jumped off a cliff into some water, and took a soothing nap under the sun - with suntan lotion (for all you mothers out there). We then left the mountain cliffs and waited for our return bus, but it didn't come so we tried hitchhiking. It was a bit of a struggle since my French isn't the best (Pouvez-vous conduire mes amis et moi?), but there was a girl who saw us practicing our petitioning cars for rides and offered us a ride about three quarters of the way, and walked back. After that, we stopped at a boulengerie to get some snacks and then headed back to the hostel. We actually don't have a room tonight since they are full, so we're sleeping on the mountains of Les Calanques. We're all pretty pumped to sleep outdoors finally - and in such a majestic setting.

Tomorrow we head for Cinque Terre, Italy. It's looking like it'll be tough to get there; we need to have perfect timing catching trains and we're not even too sure of where we're going and what the hostel situation will be like there, so please keep us in your prayers.

Au revior!