Merci to Marseille

I had been to Marseille on the last weekend. Infact we (Siva, Ilan & myself) started to go to MONT-BLANC for ski, but the climate very foggy so all buses were cancelled. In the last minute decided to go Marseille. We bought the ticket in Grenoble and we have only 5 minutes to catch the TER train... it was fun to run and catch the train. We had to travel by a TER & a TGV trains to reach that place.
We went to Valance and then from there by another TGV train we went to Marseille. This TGV train station of Valance needs a special mention. Its built on top of the tracks. I think TGV train stations are separate from normal train stations. It’s like an Airport. This has all TGV trains coming and branching. Its one of its kind in the world it seems. Then we reached Marseille.
At Marseille the train station was on top of a hill. We had to climb some 100-150 steps to get down to the city. This city is also well connected by trams, buses, waterways and trains. The city is so beautiful it doesn't resemble “no other city”.
The city is on a beautiful Mediterranean coast. It has a natural harbor. Its a modern, cosmopolitan city located in southeastern France on the Mediterranean Sea, dating back 2,500 years, it is now France’s second largest city. Greeks discovered it in 600 BC.
Its the most renowned and populated city in France after Paris, MARSEILLE has - like the capital - prospered and been ransacked over the centuries.
It has lost its privileges to sundry French kings and foreign armies, recovered its fortunes, suffered plagues (two of them), religious bigotry, republican and royalist terror and had its own Commune and Bastille-storming.
Our journey started from Vieux-Port (old harbor), then the climb up the Notre-Dame de la Garde Basilica - the "God Mother" who watches over the city gives an excellent. Some facts about the place “the height of the statue 12.5 m weight of the statue 9796 Kgs weight of the great bell 8234 Kgs”
The attached file is the view you get from there only. There are close 140 islands that make this place; you can view almost lot of these from there. One of the islands houses the famous Jail “” - This jail inspired Alexandre Dumas to write the book "Count of Monte Cristo"
There are numerous forts, It was the presence of so many Marseillaise Revolutionaries marching from the Rhine to Paris in 1792 which gave the Hymn of the Army of the Rhine its name of La Marseillaise , later to become the national anthem.
Today, it's an undeniable fact that Marseille is a deprived city, not particularly beautiful architecturally, and with acres of grim 1960’s housing estates. The houses have big gardens and they all dates back many years.
Yet it's a wonderful place to visit - a real, down-to-earth yet cosmopolitan port city with a trading history going back over 2500 years. The people are gregarious, generous, endlessly talkative and unconcerned if their style seems. The best thing is every body speaks very good “Anglais”, one more reason why I love Marseille.

When roaming around the street I saw lot of posters saying March 13th is the Carnival day in “Marseille”. I was telling Siva that we should have come next week. It would have been more fun. The reason why I was missing it was I had attended the Carnival in Koblenz when I was in Germany . The God Mother of Marseille was hearing my lament all the while and she has some surprise for me.

She was very kind to me, after we got our return tickets confirmed when we came down the railway station to grab some thing for dinner we saw lot of color paper pieces striven around. She gave the pointer as to which direction the carnival parade had gone. We closely followed the trail of the music, which took us to the carnival streets. Looks like this was a prelude one to the next week's one...I was thanking God for directing me here. And I enjoyed myself.. Took a couple of photos along with the people dressed crazily "real crazy I mean in all sense" ... then we had to run back to get our train for our way back to Grenoble. The fun did not end there.......

When we reached Valance we were informed that we would have to travel by bus as this sector was closed due to the security reasons. Guess what ??? Some one has planted bombs in the railway tracks in France 32000 KM railway network - that’s the threat. The group, known as AZF, said it would explode the 10 devices unless a ransom of $4m and 1m euros (£2.8m) was paid. Read more on this


So when we boarded a TGV bus the real fun ... remember the grab we got to have for the dinner. After getting into the bus I open my salad and started having that. Siva and myself sat in the seat just behind the driver. I was about to finish my grab..in the mean time Siva offered Ilan some food. The bus driver didn't notice this. Ilan refused to have as he was saying ‘we don't know if we can have it inside the bus’. But Siva insisted and gave him the salad. He had to take the salad from the polythene cover... so this is the culprit. The driver of the bus saw this and pulled the bus to the side of the road and halted it. He was shouting in French, which we didn't understand. Then we had to hurriedly put back everything in the bag and wait for the arrival at Grenoble.