After much deliberation about where to visit today, it was finally decided that a few of us should go to Marseille for the day (the others thought a day wasn't enough to see it so they went to Arles). The day started off pretty well with the usual hot chocolate and croissants on the train (only 1h30). As soon as we stepped out of the station we were afforded a great view of Notre Dame de la Garde across the city, putting us in high spirits. We wandered down to the Vieux Port (almost exactly as I remember it from 6 years ago), where the number of boats made Sète look like Wisbech harbour.

We then wandered up to Fort St Nicholas to take in the view across land and sea. Unfortunately that's when the torrential rain arrived that never stopped for more than 10 minutes for the rest of the day. We huddled under our umbrellas for a few minutes in case it subsided, but decided to move to lower ground when we saw some lightening. We sheltered under an arch in the fortifications for a few minutes until some park rangers came out from a door on the opposite side of the arch and started laughing and taking photos with us. They offered us shelter until the rain subsided and seeing as I looked like a drowned rat- to quote CA- we agreed. So there we sat, in the kitchen of a park ranger's house (Marcel LIVES in the Fort walls) talking to 4 others and a 15 year old daughter of one of them eating biscuits and drinking coffee (shocked faces all round when I declined said coffee). Highlights included a long chat about Corsica with a Corsican and Marcel giving us his email and phone number.

Anyway, after about 30 minutes the rain had stopped so we said thankyou and left. We had been planning to walk up to Notre Dame de la Garde, but clearly it was going to be a nightmare with the weather situation, so I allowed myself to believe a trip on the tourist train was a necessary evil. Evil being the operative word. We bought our tickets from a man in a booth but before we could get into position to wait for our 'train' a man with a walkey talkey stopped us and told us to wait there. He then engaged us in conversation and when CA dropped her ticket in a puddle I believed the ticket man was going to give her another one, so gestured for her to go over to him. However, it turned out that he wanted to kiss her (!). Meanwhile, walkey talkey man asked me in quick succession if I was single (no), did I want to kiss him on the cheek (no), did I want to kiss him on the lips (NO). CA finally returned and we hurried onto the train, but he followed us and kept insisting CA had to kiss the ticket man. Verging on harassment, he finally left us alone before I had the chance to throw a cup of wine on him.

NDdlG was still beautiful and it was amazing to watch the next batch of rain slowly making it's way towards us, completely blanking out the mountains and sea as it travelled. By the time we returned back to the Port the water level had risen so high it was about 4cm from flooding. I wish I'd taken a picture; it looked as if you could walk off the edge of the port straight onto the water. We decided to give up on sightseeing and headed to a restaurant for a few hours before making our way back to the station on the metro.

At least life here is never dull, eh?