A tale of two hostels.

So after Switzerland we managed to catch a boat to the south of France for some sun. We ended up in Marseilles for a couple of days. Marseilles is a bit different then the rest of France in that is has a strangely north African feel to it. Surrounded by barren, rocky hills it is comprised almost entirely of those blocky white-washed buildings that you always see getting blown up in the latest international footage on CNN. The town itself was alright..comparatively a little drab, but what we ended up liking most about Marseilles was the hostel we stayed in..La Cigale et la Fourmi.. this place was bonkers!!..but in a nice, cozy kinda way. It was run by a french man named Jean who was very friendly and invited us to the hostel he is building in the Philippines. But the real star of the show was this older french/greek man named Patrick (imagine a rambunctious, buzzed and very jovial Keith Richards, leather pants and all) Patrick loved his wine and spent the evenings telling stories of his five daughters with five different women, stories of his time in the isreali army and why he hates arabs (this caused quite a stir with the majority of the guests), how he loves `the asiatic girls` aka Helen, how he just scammed the gaggle of spanish kids staying in the building next door out of some hash, how he speaks seven languages, how he let me beat him at chess, and so on). We spent the bulk of our three days in Marseilles relaxing here, chatting up the others or sleeping the hot afternoons away in our tiny pumpkin coloured room with unabashed views of the neighboring rooftops.

(Notre Dame over Vieux Port in Marseilles)

(street of La Cigale and La Fourmi)

(Marseilles city-scape)

After Marseilles we paddled over to Nice for the weekend. Nice is nice..a sunny and affluent beach city where everyone is pretty and tanned..like a larger Santa Monica perhaps. Here we stayed in what Helen and I started calling "hookup hostel" (Villa St Exubery for those interested in hooking up).. this place was like a college dorm crossed with a Club Med. Helen and I were the oldest people there I think outside from the owners and maybe one of the maintenance guys.. The entire 200 bed place was filled with tall handsome lads and lasses from all over the globe..but mostly comprised of Yanks and Aussies.
Despite this it was actually a pretty cool venue..built out of a converted monastery..20 free computers in the common room, clean rooms, free breakfast and a nightly dinner service with 5 euro dinner specials and 1 euro beer. All in all a good venue. But at night it turned in to Club Hookup..after dinner the common room would be filled to capacity with these young pretties, guy and gals alike, all dressed in heels and hairdos while the music played louder and louder and the pyramids of beer cans stacked on various tables grew taller and taller. The revelry would continue until about 3 or 4 am and could be heard throughout the complex.

Being somewhat short of rest, as you might imagine, Helen and I spent our days trekking to overrated Monaco and the medieval art village of Eze or relaxing on the beach watching the local kids with their little nets catch a flock of jellyfish (in french: medusa) that had just drifted into the wadding shallows.

(nice beachs)

(this brave young medusa-hunter had just caught one; but like myself and so many other brave children of Perseus she too fell victum to the itchy stings less than three minutes after this photo was taken. In a bawl and tear, she fled the hunt and was rescued from the fray by her kind and brave mother.*)

*the medusa stings only really itched a little, no real pain or danger..

(Eze art town)

Having had our fill of sun and fun in the cote d'azur we let ourselves drift west towards Barcelona.