Excusez-Moi de vous Deranger, Mais Parlez-vous Anglais?

I am back from visiting Southern France. It was quite the week! We began our trip from the South Zwolle station in Zwolle; and it was raining. wow - typical Dutch weather. We took the "route du soleil" - the road of the sun, but when we reached Belgium we had "typical Belgium weather", and in luxemburg we had "typical Luxemburg weather", which is of course - RAIN! But, by the time we reached Marseilles it was beautiful weather with temperatures in the 20s.

Driving through Marseilles was another adventure. We had an appointment for a walking tour at 1:00, and at 1:00 we were stuck in traffic. We could have been on time, but the road our TomTom took us on led us to a tunnel that was 40cm shorter than the height of our bus, so we ended up taking backroads which meant driving mere centimeters away from vehicles on either side of the bus - quite literally without any exageration whatsoever. I don't know how we didn't end up hitting anything. Our busdriver Peter did an excellent job, although I bet he didn't sleep very well the night after that.

By the end of our first day my feet hurt so badly I could hardly stand up anymore. And having only slept for a max of 30 min. on our 17 hour drive to Marseilles I was pretty tired. Everyone was. There wasn't a whole lot of lively conversation at supper time, and everyone was sound asleep not too long after supper.

On Sunday we went to a church service in Marseilles. I got to see Aunt Emma, Jonathan and Daniel de Hoog, which was quite exciting. We ate lunch at the church, and they stayed as well, so we got to catch up for a while. It was really nice.

We had quite a lot of fun that night as well. We ended up walking down to the Mediteranean Sea a few minutes walking from our Hostel, and walked in the water - a bit cold, but a lot of fun. We also had a blast in our room that night - Jeanna, Amanda, Annie and I. It was quite the evening, and definitely one of the highlights of the whole trip.

After our two nights in Marseilles we headed to Aix-en-Provence. This is where Cezanne came from and lived his life. For those who don't know who he is, he's a painter - a post-impressionist. yeah....

Cezanne's work "Mont-Sainte Victoire"

The same mountain in Aix-en-Provence

We toured around there a bit. I was told it was a smaller town - I think my idea of small towns is different, because it sure looked like a city to me. It was fun though - except we were all still exhausted by the end of the day.

My favourite day of the trip was Wednesday. That was the day we learned a bit about the Huguenots. The exciting part was climbing this hill/mountain to a cave in which about 900 Huguenots would hold services a few times a day since they weren't allowed to hold normal services. They climbed up to the cave in the dark, which was quite dangerous, as it wasn't the easiest trek at all in the day time. When we finally reached the cave (a 25-30 min. hike) I was really surprised at how big it was. But, then again I should have expected it to be big since 900 people could fit in it. We sang songs, and it was beautiful. Quite amazing.

Heading towards the cave - halfway up the hill

The Cave

We also went to see the Pont du Gard. That was definitely quite amazing. It's a Roman aquaduct, but it was quite different when compared to the one we saw in Ceasarea - the Pont du Gard is HUGE! It was also super windy when we were there (thanks to the Mistral). It was really neat to see.

Aquaduct Ceasarea

Pont du Gard

So yeah... those were probably my main highlights of the trip. On our way home I accidentally left my camera and wallet at the restaurant, but I got a call that it was found, which is quite exciting - hopefully everything's still there. I'm just thankful it was found.

Anyway, I'll write more later (on my Oma's birthday party, and my Dad's visit with Marc)