A Weekend in Marseille

I just got back from a beautiful weekend in Marseille! I've been to Marseille before, but just on a day trip a few summers ago while I was living in the south of France. I just wandered around the city, through the different markets and huge crowds of people out for a nice Saturday afternoon. It seemed like a very lively, southern, Mediterranean city, but it was just a glimpse. This past weekend I was lucky enough to have a friend from Canada to stay with just outside of the centre. He is also doing an exchange at a business school and his friend was gone for the weekend so my friend and I were able to have a room to stay in for free. It was really interesting to see another type of ERASMUS lifestyle. Unlike in Paris, most of the exchange students were living in one big residence a short bus ride from their school. It was almost like summer camp or first year university, everyone was really friendly and they did a lot of group activities together. There were communal kitchens where there were always groups of people cooking up a storm. It has much more of a relaxed, southern, style. We went out to a few different bars while we were there and saw a bit of what the nightlife in Marseille is like. It is definitely more casual compared to Paris, but it was a lot of fun.
We also did a lot of sight-seeing in and around the city. We tried some seafood at a really nice restaurant downtown as well (which was much cheaper than it would have been in Paris). My favourite part was going to "les calanques" which is what is pictured above. We hiked for around forty minutes to get there and it was well worth it. The view was absolutely breathtaking and it was really refreshing to breath some fresh air and be surrounded by nature. It made me miss the south of France, it is such a beautiful place. Overall the trip was really great, my friend was an amazing host and it was nice to get out of the city for a bit and experience some new things.

Here are some of my observations/interesting things I learned about Marseille:

1) It is the second biggest city in France (over 800,000)
2) It really does deserve its reputation as the "dirtiest city in France." The downtown streets were covered in litter.
3) You can definitely see certain differences in immigration trends. There is a lot stronger North African presence in Marseille, you can notice just by looking at the people and by the fact that there are kebab places on every corner. There are a lot of kebab places in Paris as well, but not nearly as many. I also noticed that there seemed to be a lot fewer Asian people in Marseille, I didn't see a single "Traiteur Chinois," or Japanese restaurant (which are both abundant in Paris).
4) I think that the people in Marseille speak slower, which is definitely good for understanding their French. I was told that there would be a really noticeable difference in accents, but I think the speed was the thing that I noticed most.
5) Marseille has a metro system, though it only consists of 2 lines (unlike Paris which has 14). The bus system is a bit strange though because it is really easy to just walk on a bus without a ticket, or without validating one (meaning you can just use it again). Once you validate a ticket it lasts for 1 hour and you can use it again within that hour. The only "control" that they have is random officers who will stop buses and check everyone for tickets, and fine those who don't have one. I didn't see any of these officers though and we took the bus quite a lot.