24th March - tram tripping

Today we decided to get some school work done early and then hit the trams.  We walked to the bus/tram/metro station and decided to hop on a tram to go to the ends of the line to see where it went.  We hopped on the first one and then it only went two stopped and said there were big delays due to a protest happening.

There was no information in English we worked out there was a big delay when everyone hopped off and we realised that this was probably due to a protest when we saw there were hundreds of people marching and police everyehere!

So we decided to walk and explore:- we walked up the main street - le Canebiere where we found a beautiful old Church - St Vincent De Paul, also known as Eglise Des Reformers which was built in 1855.

 From here we continued up the street, stopped for pizza and then to Palais Longchamp, built in 1862. This is 12 hectare of palais, gardens and surrounds and was built when a river was opened and Marseille got a good supply of water - it is a homage to water.

After this we then hopped on the tram and headed back toward home and further on to see how far the tram went.  It is so interesting seeing all the different parts of Marseille.  We hopped off at La Joliette, where "la docks" a new flash shopping area which apparently used to be the bad part of Marseille before they tore it down the old buildings and accommodation and made it into more of an upmarket tourist dock area.
Here are the boys in the "la docks" sign:- chilling while we wait for our bus to home.  It was only a 10 minute walk home, but with the transpass card we decided to catch the bus to our door! We had walked quite a way to Palais Longchamp.  It was then home to chill and wait to catch up with our friends Dave and Donna who were passing through Marseille on their Europe trip.

 Duh - just Karl got to catch up with Dave and Donna as Connor got a vomiting bug which hit about 4.30pm.  He headed out for dinner and drinks and cruised home about midnight - good night apparently!