May 17 Duncan Blog

Bonjour from Marseille,

Well, we are nearing the end of our grand journey. We have had three couples come visit since our last blog. In April, Garry’s niece Melissa and her husband Jeremy Padbury came to visit us from England. Jeremy is in the Air Force and is currently stationed in England. While the weather was less than perfect, it did not stop us from some sightseeing. Melissa and Jeremy shopped the open-air markets for gifts and items for their home in England, and then took the bus to Cassis, a beautiful little seaside village not far from Marseille where they went on a boat ride to the famous calanques. The next day, they got to see the calanques from up on top of the cliffs, quite a different view. They also went to the beach and then walked the John F. Kennedy Cornish, a highway that goes along the cliffs of the Mediterranean Sea.

A week ago Saturday our son Matt and his wife Kendra arrived. We had a bad omen from the start: upon arrival back at our apartment after picking them up at the airport, the 60-year old lock on our apartment failed to work. It took the locksmith two hours to break in to our apartment at a cost of 185 euros (or about $270 US). On Monday morning we had to stick around Marseille in order to have a new lock put on the door (1,200 euros, or about $1,500 US). These are not the shabby lock and door systems that are generally have in the US. Fortunately, the owners were readily willing to take care of the bill. We spent Monday afternoon going to Cassis where Matt and Kendra took a boat ride to see the calanques. Tuesday was largely a shopping day and sightseeing in Marseille, including the calanques, where it was very, very windy. Kendra was very successful in finding and purchasing a lot of unusual fabrics for their new house in Lincoln. We ate at a restaurant down at the beach their last evening in Marseille. We enjoyed ourselves so much that we did not head back to the apartment until after 10:00 PM. We were in no hurry because we assumed that the buses and subways ran until at least midnight. WRONG! So, we had a nice, long 3.5-mile walk home. Matt and Kendra left the next day for Paris, glad to be out of Marseille and the bad omens. Their first evening in Paris they climbed the Eiffel Tower whereupon they got some rain. Everyone else cleared out and they had the tower to themselves as the rain cleared out. We just got word that they are safely back home in Lincoln.
Our most recent guests, Paula and Les Schulz, spent less than two full days with us, but they got to experience perfect Marseille weather. They did our normal two-day tour of Marseille in one very full day. They spent time on the tram, the buses, the metro (subway) and even took a boat ride out to the nearby islands. They helped us set a new distance record for the number of steps in one day, 29,686 steps, just short of 12 miles (see photo of evidence). (While this is indeed the longest distance, our greatest challenge was the 27,000+ rugged steps we did on the Cinque Terra in Italy with Janet Johnson.) Nonetheless, all four of us were thoroughly exhausted. Paula and Les left for Nice today on the train in order to experience the most famous area of the French Rivera, and then fly on to Rome tomorrow on Monday.

Our final group of guests arrives Wednesday and depart on Sunday, May 24. We will spend Sunday and Monday cleaning the apartment, washing laundry, canceling bank accounts, etc.; we then vacate the apartment on Tuesday, May 26, for a short trip to northeastern France (Strasbourg, Colmar, the Wine Road), and then over to Paris and Versailles before leaving out of Paris for Lincoln on Sunday, May 31. So, we will be seeing all of you Lincolnites real soon, like it or not.

Happy trails to you all. Garry

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