Marseille day 1!

So we made it back to Marseille after a very long 12 1/2 hr train ride.  It was not as bad as the ride over the first time because we were not jet lagged this time and most of the way was either first class or hugging the beautiful coast of Italy/France.  We traveled through Milan and went through some very beautiful mountains in Italy.  Very glad that day is over, though.

The first full day in Marseille was spent finding food and finding our way around our new summer home.
After we got breakfast, we made a trip to the local grocery store.  We brought two big bags to help us carry our groceries back the three blocks to our apartment.
Our morning was also spent doing lots of laundry!  We do have a washing machine in our place, but no dryer.  This is a new experience for us to not have a dryer.  The apartment has a very small balcony that opens to the street four stories up.  When I first opened it to the street, I noticed a line that was strung across the balcony with clothes pins attached with another what looked like a small drying rack on one side.  The apartment is about two rooms wide and has wonderful doors/windows that open up to get the breeze across the house.  There is no a/c either, but it has been pretty here so far so that has not been too day.  After I did the laundry I was very happy for the line and drying rack outside for all our clothes.  I eventually found a hidden mud room that had a very small room with another window and more lines for drying!

We are working on not being the very loud Americans that we normally are.  We are learning to not walk loudly up and down the stairs and learning little bits of French everyday.  We are also learning to watch were we step when walking down the street because we are living in a big city now and the dogs are happy to go wherever they please.  We are finding the bakeries with the yummy baguettes and croissants, although they have very strange hours here, usually closed in the middle day.

One of our other adventures the first day was riding the local Tram line that runs down our street.  We also rode the Metro and the Bus all in one day.  That was our work for the day.  Our play was finding the best park close by.  Thing we found it!  It is called Longchamps and is very beautiful!  It has many open spaces for soccer and Frisbee and even a-little baseball.  They boys brought their gloves and got lots of attention throwing, because baseball is rare in France.  Soccer is the main sport!  We even has an American guy walk by and could not believe we were playing baseball!  We ended up playing soccer with he and his boys.  We met a few other people and had a fun pick up soccer game.  We will be here a lot this summer and it seems if you bring balls you will always make friends!

I think I have bummed enough time down the street at the McDs who is the only local place by us with wifi that we have found.   xoxo