School Trip to Marseille: Day 1
After six weeks of hard work at school, we had our first school trip to the South of France! The Marseille Trip was a week long and with half of my grade, the other half of the grade went to the city, Montpellier, and in the spring we will switch trips!
We left from La Gare in Rennes at 7:45am, and made the four hour train ride over to the South! This was my first time on the train in France and I had a comfortable ride that exceeded my expectations. There was high speed wifi and a charging outlet, so everything was all good in my book:). We arrived in Marseille at around 1pm and walked twenty minutes to our hotel. The first instant change from Rennes: the heat! It was starting to get chilly in Rennes so this trip was much needed for some weather change, and it did not disappoint. It was 75 degrees out and sunny! Once we got to the hotel I instantly changed into shorts to soak up as much summer sun as I could in the fall. Our first activity in Marseille was visiting the Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde. This basilica was quite the uphill hike to get to, but it was so worth the views and the beautiful interior. It’s one of the most visited sights in Marseille, plus a historical and religious landmark.
Next we had some fieldwork! Fieldwork is the work we do in a class called Experiential French. Fieldwork tasks are place-based assignments which can’t be done in the classroom. How it works is we receive a paper with questions or tasks to complete in the city based on the theme of the Fieldwork. Some examples are interviewing locals, finding a specific monument, or describing a painting you enjoyed at a museum. For this Fieldwork in Marseille, our job was to find the listed monuments, and to take a selfie in front of each one. So my friends and I went off on our journey to find the monuments and explore the city of Marseille. The monuments were l’Opera, l’Ombriere, le Musee d’Histoire de Marseille, and a place of our choice. We chose Amorino Gelato as our last monument and a gelato pit stop. After we finished and submitted our fieldwork, we spent some time walking around the touristy shops and admiring the boats at the Vieux-Port, the main marina of Marseille and where our hotel was conveniently located.
There are many very significant differences from Rennes and Marseille. First, the size. I didn’t know this until the first day of the trip, but Marseille is the second biggest city of France, with the first being Paris of course! Second, the ambiance. Rennes is a city of many families and students, while Marseille is a city of tourism and the sea. I loved being close to the water for the week for a change of scenery, Rennes has lots of farmland and forests. The people in Marseille were also different. Since Rennes is a small city, you become very familiar with it’s people and surroundings. But in Marseille, we had to be aware because pick-pocketing is very common and people will be out to get you in the sea of sightseers. Also, the drivers in Marseille do not stop for you or anyone! That was marked very clear on the very first day😅.
We had dinner at a restaurant called La Galiote on the Vieux-Port, 100% recommended this place! I had moules frites, or mussels and fries, for the first time in my life! I thought, “When else will I be 17 in the South of France with the chance to eat fresh mussels, might as well take the opportunity to try!” I was a big fan, definitely ordering again. Once I got home and told my family I tried moules frites, they told me that the dish is actually a specialty in our home region Bretagne, not Marseille…guess I need to try them again to have authentic mussels! I also tried my friend’s truffle pasta. It was to die for🤤…rigatoni + truffle, I need nothing more. So if you’re in Marseille, visit La Galiote!
That was the end of day 1, just the beginning of this crazy fun trip!
