Sunday, November 11, 2007

Nice!!!

we had to leave Marseilles about 5pm to catch a train to Nice! we arrived in Nice about 7+ later in that evening, we passed through the world famous cannes!

day 1:

first attraction in Nice, Marc Chagall museum, it is worth a visit (if you are a little bit into paintings like me), even if you dont know who he is or wat he did...



they had special displays of his work, for a limited time, it happened to visit it during this period of time!





many interesting paintings! but this one was special for me....


the Russian church was quite interesting, looking like a mosque
Croissantsfrom Carrefour



day 2:
cannes, the film festival place



streets were full of hotels..... afterall , its for the rich and famous



they controlled most part of the beaches...

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Marseille

firstly sorry for the really loooong break. I always knew that this would happen when I start a blog, because blogging was never my kind of thing. Given the importance of things that has happened here in sweden, I didnt feel the need to write a blog. But as the closing stage of this phase of life nears, I feel the need to document my memories of this stay in europe, much of which will stay with me forever.

For now we switch to start from where we left off!

Train from Barca to Marseille:
Our train from barca started at 8.10, which meant we had to leave really early from our hostel. Waking up early has never been easy, it wasn't on that day either. The previous night they had a 'shots' party in bar nearby, so everyone cameback really late, but thankfully no one woke us up....

We showed some courtesy in the morning by not disturbing any of them. well the train ride was pretty scenic for the most part! It was raining sometimes, but that didn't do enough to stop me from enjoying the scenic ride. We had to switch trains at Montpelier, then another 1hr30mins, we finally arrived in Marseilles in the evening.

The streets of Marseilles was pretty cool with blue lightings from the buildings. Surprisingly more people spoke in english and were quite helpful.




We walked around the town area, finding quite a number of interesting sites, then we came across this restaurant on the ship, or rather a ship that was a restaurant. It looked pretty impressive and was really glowing with lights.

If you travel with a girlfriend, this would be a perfect place for a romantic dinner by the "busiest port of France", but since I did not and was not traveling with one, I decided to stop with a picture






The Fort of Marseille in the night light, again blue lights.
By the time we reached the fort we were really exhausted, i wanted to continue on a little bit more to see what was in the Fort, but Ben was totally gone, so we went back to hotel to sleep!




Day 2

In the morning, we bought croissant and some orange juice from the supermarket nearby. We checked out from the hotel in the morning at about 9, but they had offered baggage storage for us. Thanks to this we could walk around again without carrying our baggages.

I really understood, why Marseilles was called "the port of France"




Notre-Dame church in Marseilles
We wanted to check it out, but it was on top of a hill, after Barcelona adventures, ben didn't want to do it again. For me the sun was really up and shining so I skipped it as well.



The park in Marseilles, with the university
I wished NTU (my university in Singapore) had such a place. It would be perfect, despite the fact Margit mentioning that "sunny Singapore has become rainy Singapore" in the last couple of months.



View of port, the ocean, and the university from the park

I really savored these moments, this is one place I would comeback just to sit in the park!



Trams were pretty cool too!!! check out the video


it was suprisingly good looking for trams, futuristic and shiny!! there was no checking of tickets of any sorts. Once again in europe matter of trust comes into play. I had to think of what will happen if there was a similar scenario in Singapore MRT system. To me, most definitely this would result in a disaster for SMRT and they'll go bankrupt in a few days.


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Now playing: Bon Jovi - Keep The Faith