Marseille to Paris

On Friday morning (February 15th), we packed up, cleaned up, dropped our keys in the box, and walked up, the sizable hill to the Gare Saint Charles. It was a crisp morning, but I got quite warm climbing the endless stairs up to the hilltop train station. We caught a TGV train from Marseille to Paris at 9:35am. TGV stands for train à grande vitesse, or high-speed train. I Googled it.

Canebière crise

Aka: cannabis crisis
After a late lunch and some rest on Valentine's Day, we went on a walk to check out Marseille's Rue Julien street art area. Even though I knew street art basically means graffiti, it was more... graffiti-ish than I expected, haha. It looked cool, but I hope I didn't take pictures of any bad stuff!

Valentine Run

We woke up on Valentine's Day feeling tired and sore from our evening calanque scramble the night before, but February 14th was our last full day in Marseille and we still wanted to see more of the beautiful Calanques National Park. After a leisurely breakfast in our apartment, we donned our [slightly smelly] running clothes again and caught the 9:45 B1 bus out to les calanques and found a new trail to run, once again using Jeff's incomprehensible internal compass.

The Calanque Scramble

The Calanque Scramble, also tagged in my memory as The Hot Mess Hike.

Les Letres de Marseille

After our morning walk and lunch on our second day in Marseille (Wednesday, February 13th), Jeff was feeling a major jet lag slump. I was a little tired, but it seemed like a waste of time to sit in our apartment at high noon in a new city! With promises to do as little walking as possible, I coerced my lethargic husband into an excursion to find the Hollywood-style sign up in the hills, les letres de Marseille.

Marseille in the morning

Day two of our Marseille stay began with another early morning walk. This time we strolled around Vieux Port (old port) with all of the boats moored in the smooth harbor, looped past the Porte d'Aix (a decorative arch) and through Noailles with its daily outdoor market. Once again, Jeff's internal compass wound us on a near-perfect loop around town.

Marseille, Day 1

The morning after our arrival in Marseille, jet lag woke us up dark and early. I was awake at a ridiculous 1:20am after less than 4 hours of sleep (that's 4:20pm Pacific time). Jet lag is so weird! I laid there trying to fall asleep for an hour before giving up and pulling out my Kindle to read. Jeff woke up around 3:30 and somehow we managed to wait till 5am to eat breakfast. I was ravenous! It was so hard to wait that long. But at last we were crunching into heavenly bowls of Kellog’s Extra granola (with dark chocolate chunks and toasted hazelnuts) with strawberry Yop yogurt poured on top. It hit the spot. I look forward to eating Extra every time we go to France.

Rose's Baptism

Our Rose-girl was so excited to be baptized! I wanted to make sure she wanted to get baptized and wasn't just going along with it, so a few weeks ago I asked her. She looked at me like I was crazy and barely deigned to answer. You keep using that gritty determination to stick to the right path, daughter.

Celebrating Rose

Rose turned eight on February 7th, 2019. We love our Rose girl so much. She is intense, vivacious, vibrant, and joyful. She feels every single emotion with her entire soul and body.

Travel time

Jeff and I went on our "yearly date" last week! The jet lag is finally fading enough for coherent writing. We visited France's two biggest cities: Marseille and Paris. It was our best date trip yet. The more we travel, the more we discover how we like to travel, from packing light (one simple backpack apiece) to methods of exploration (minimal museums, maximum running). We love discovering new places and visiting old favorites together while developing our very own travel style.

Single digit dash

Yesterday (Wednesday) there was a 2 hour delay for school and it kind of threw off my whole day. Negative two degrees seemed too cold to run in the morning, so I waited till the sun rose a bit higher. Then I was too hungry... (hello, snack time!) ...and it was still frigid outside...and I had tons of things to do around the house. As the day progressed, I kept putting off my run and feeling lame about it. Generally I am fine with taking a day off of running--I rest at least twice a week. But I prefer to make the decision beforehand. If a non-running day is planned, it doesn't feel lazy, and I can thoroughly enjoy the rest. But like yesterday, when the day fizzles away from me and I never get out there and go for a run, I feel SO lazy, no matter how many other things I check off my list.

Nightmares and cake

As strange as it may sound, nightmares and cake have gone together more often than not in my life over the past decade. Since I am much more adept at baking savory foods like bread rather than sweet foods like cake, making the cake is usually the nightmare. This week, however, I dreamed the worst cakeless nightmare of my life and then had to teach my son how to make a cake the next day.