Nice and Barcelona are big tourist places, so they have signs in multiple languages including English. Marseilles, however, is apparently not made for tourists, and has few signs in English and not nearly as many people that speak English. We arrived in Marseilles very early in the morning.... I think it was 5am or so. Eric went to the Accueil (information?) desk at the train station to see if there was somewhere we could store our luggage. The guy at the counter didn't help him but instead asked him why he didn't just use French.

Who has seen the Count of Monte Cristo? I'm looking for someone to brag to. In Marseilles, we took a boat out to If and Frioul, two nearby islands. On If is Chateau d'If, the fortress/prison where the story of the Count of Monte Cristo takes place. Marseilles is kinda a gigantic Saugatuck. Millions of boats. We took the boat to and between and back from the islands.

While we were on Frioul (the island off of Marseilles), we had lunch at a pizza cafe probably 50 yards from the docks. The view was great, and the food was quite good as well. I got the "Sophia Loren": pizza with ham, mushrooms, and egg. I also got a quarter liter of red wine. Unlike the white wine I had in Marseilles, this actually tasted good. Unfortunately, it was very windy that day, and the umbrella over a neighboring table tipped over on our table! So now I have a nice red wine stain on my shorts.

I did, however, fare better than Jason, who lost some blood. But now he knows that when the sign says "Beware of Seagulls," you need to watch out!

I bought food at the train station on the way back from Marseilles. I got a tartelette au sucre et pain campagne. Unfortunately, they couldn't understand me when I asked for the bread, so I had to resort to pointing.