Count of Monte Cristo

We are now in the midst of a whirlwind tour...spending only a few days at best in each place to briefly experience the major sights and experiences. Although we werent keen to spend much more time in Marseille, there were still a couple sights I wanted to see before leaving. Im sure you can guess our first order of business...yup, Starbucks! And then straight to the docks to catch a boat to the Chateau Dif. The wind had died down and was replaced by an unrelenting sun which accompanied us throughout the next few hours. The short boat ride also showed us several locals enjoying their weekends on their speedy yachts or lazy sailboats.
The Chateau Dif wasnt quite Alcatraz but it was still fun for me to run around and explore. The best part of our explorations was a series of pictures that illustrate MY version of escaping the Chateau. I wish I could post them, but i will just have to wait until i have a proper computer to do so. The Countess of North Hills will come to a blog near you at some point in the future :) (stephen has his own series as well...but a little more original). caution: certain to be cheesy :)
After running around the deserted prison, we road the boat back to Marseille and proceeded to climb the very steep streets to Notre Dame which overlooks the city, bay, and beyond. It is a prominant building capped by a golden statue that is visible from almost any point of Marseille. It was worth a quick look, so thats what we did. We didnt have much time to spare, so we walked in, around, and back down with just enough time to appreciate the art, views, and take a few pictures. One interesting note: This church is where many wives of sailors would go to pray. Apparently they had confidence in their husbands (or sons) abilities at sea so they would pray: Please protect my loved one while he is on land because i know he will be fine at sea. :) Being a place of prayer, I decided to send up a prayer on my own for all the military friends/acquaintances I know serving our country and for the US troops in general.
On our way back down, we stopped by our hostel, made sandwiches for lunch, then hurridly left for the train station. We had allowed ourselves a good hour and fifteen minutes to get there, get reservations, and find our platform. It only took us about 10 minutes to get there but when we asked for a reservation, the ticket-man told us the train was filled and wasnt taking any more reservations!!! I was a bit worried that we would be staying in Marseille another night...but without any reservations...until the ticket-man decided to try entering other routes to Barcelona. By Gods grace, he was thorough in his search and found an alternative route that added train changes, but would get us to Barcelona at the same time we had originally planned for. He quickly printed our tickets and pointed us to the platform that our train was to leave from in just a few minutes! We ran to the platform and immediately entered the train. At first we couldnt find our seats, but a conductor showed us that we were on the wrong train and needed to get on the train just behind this one! Once we were on the correct train, we found our seats and began our journey to Spain. After a train ride to a bus in Avignon, and connecting to two other trains, we arrived in Barcelona...and this time with much better instructions to our hostel than before. Its actually extremely close to the Metro and even though we arrived at 11:00pm, it is located just off a main street that was still bustling with activity, getting ready for another weekend night. Steve and I settled in (to much dirtier beds than we have had so far...should be interesting. at this point i am very glad we brought our silk liners!) and now im going to get some sleep so as to be awake for a tour of Barcelona!