Sailing in Marseille

OH MY GOODNESS! I absolutely LOVE sailing, though I would've liked a bigger boat. But it was awesome! And I steered for a while. It was backwards though on one side, and then you have to move to the other and it's the right way - whatever. I just didn't like when it tilted close to the water, as in the railing was in the water basically - thanks Guru. And you really can get smacked by the rod if you're not watching out. But you have to "feel the wind" and find it... Anyways, we sailed by chateau d'if (eef, not if like we normally say) which is the castle mentioned in the count of monte cristo but not the one in the movie. Then we pulled off to the side by this one island that used to be a quarantine area for foreigners coming into marseille and threw out the anchor (not that it did anything bc the water was so deep 0 the boat still floated away from us) and JUMPED RIGHT IN THE MEDITERRANEAN! Whew what a rush! It wasn't TOO too cold. I really like Clay's nick name "skipper" (since the French boatman couldn't pronounce clay "cray") bc he really reminds me of a fish - always wanting to just swim down as far as he can. Man it would be pretty horrid to get tired while swimming out there. We weren't really too close to the rocks.


We visited Notre Dame de la Garde cathedral - gorgeous! And i bought a Bible in French. Yes I did. And so what it's for kids!? That means I shouldn't have trouble reading it. They set it up so you can read a page each day. I'm so going to try it.


Then Chris Matt and Clay had Bouillabaisse (sp) a classic French dish, each paid 32 euro. So they paid 96 euro for a dish of 6 fish, 3 shrimp, 1 thing we couldn't distinguish and 3-5 mussels. All of them whole - with the heads and eyes (except the fish) and fins and scales and little feet (shrimp). Gross. Denuzzo was NOT happy. I got spaghetti bolognaise (just good ole spaghetti, guys). I'm REALLY craving some frites (fries) though! And that was my day. Next stop, paireee!

This is the boat tilting, not my camera.
One of our sails. and the sky!

This is where we stopped and JUMPED IN! C'etait un peu froid.

Gorgeous view from the sea

Notre Dame de la Garde - I love this picture bc of the sky in the background

A traditional French dish Bouillabaise (if I spelled it right)

Chateau d'If - old prison kind of like Alcatraz

Notre Dame de la Garde (sorry the pics are a bit out of order)

Pope John Paul II was there (not when I went though, of course)!