I awoke Wednesday and decided to explore the city with a few key spots in mind. I first walked along the coastline from my hostel to Vieux Port, a walk that was a couple of hours long, but well worth the legwork.
I arrived at the port just in time to hop on a boat to the Fioul Islands just off of the coast.
While there I spent the better part of the day hiking the Ile de Pomegues, one of the islands.
On the island there were numerous historical buildings, I believe all of which formerly were military related. At the end of the island (the furthest point from the mainland) there was an entire complex of abandoned buildings that I walked through. It was really interesting and very neat, though a bit scary wandering through abandoned buildings alone when I hadn't seen another human being on the island at all during my hour and a half of hiking.
This island was also, I might mention, the WINDIEST PLACE ON EARTH. It was like a tornado. Inside of a hurricane. Being beat up by another tornado. All taking place inside of a giant wind tunnel.
It was so windy that it blew my sunglasses right off of my face and down a cliff. And I of course had to climb down the cliff in order to take a picture of this.
Climbing back up was another story. Imagine wind so strong that it's nearly impossible to stand up straight on level ground. Now imagine climbing up a rocky cliff in this wind. Now imagine realizing halfway up that the reason you are going through this struggle is because upon your sunglasses being blown right off of your very own face you ran down to take a picture without thinking about how you would get back up said cliff.... Yep.
Anyways, after hiking the islands I returned to the mainland where I wandered around the old area of the city before heading over to the Notre Dame de la Garde, a church that sits on top of a hill overlooking the city. It was really very interesting and quite beautiful
After that I started my return walk to my hostel, getting home just as it was turning dark. I woke up Thursday and decided to leave things to chance because of the train strikes. I was going to go to the train station and hop on the first train going to either Lyon, Nice, or home to Paris.
I got to the train station and there was a train leaving for Paris in 3 minutes, and from the looks of the departure board nothing going to either of the three places for quite a long time after that, so I hopped the train and headed home.
Saturday was my birthday, and a group of us went out for dinner at a very tasty Mexican food restaurant.
And then went out for a couple of beers. All in all it was a very lovely week, and I think I might try to take another little trip around France soon!
(If you want to see more pictures from my trip go to http://sarah.turkstra.net .... there are some very beautiful pictures from all three cities!)
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