Friday, June 15th (Marseilles, Arles, Avignon & Lyon, France)

We woke up this morning planning to hit the beach in Nice one last time but much to our surprise it was pouring rain and lightning! Since the hotel was going to make us change rooms for extending our reservation, we decided to take off from Nice and break up the long drive we had to Paris the following day.

We took off expecting to head to Monaco and check out Monte Carlo but there was so much flooding in the streets we decided it was best to get to higher ground and get out of the South of France before we sailed away. Good call on our point because once we were an hour outside of Nice, the weather was beautiful and sunny.

The first stop on our drive to Lyon was Marseilles. The ‘mean streets of Marseilles’ as Jobby called them because apparently this is where Zidane is from (the French football player who headbutted that Italian guy in the world cup last year). Much to our surprise, this city seemed very beautiful. It is all based around the oldest port in France. The water was blue and beautiful and the port was full of sailboats of all sizes. We ‘snuck’ into the upscale Sofitel hotel on the hill of the fort and got a great overview of the city.

From there we headed to Arles, the home of Van Gogh. Arles is a quaint little city on the Rhone and we stopped to scope out a few of the scenes from which Van Gogh drew his inspiration (and cut off his ear). After a stop at a Roman era coliseum (still used for bull fighting today) we went down to the river to find the scene from “Starry Night Over the Rhone” and then into town for “Café at Nuit.” The city and surrounding country were quite beautiful although we didn’t see quite as many flower-bursts as Van Gough painted.

The last stop on our way to Lyon was Avignon for dinner. This was a unique and old city and we grabbed dinner in the shadow of St. Pierre’s Church hidden away in the cobblestone maze of old town (it seems every city in Europe has a cobblestone old town meant for walking only but which the Euros do not mind driving on, at frighteningly high speeds, particularly for pedestrians). We had some interesting salads and crepes for dinner (Carla’s crepe had salad, tomato sauce, one slice of ham and an egg on top). Luckily, we topped off our interesting dinner with a fantastic sweet crepe – hot bananas with hot chocolate sauce and whipped cream on top.

We saw our most beautiful sunset yet driving from Avignon to Lyon. We also encountered our biggest thunderstorm yet (which probably made for the amazing sunset).

We arrived in our sketchy, sketchy, SKETCHY hotel in Lyon just before midnight. Much to our surprise we didn’t even have a shower curtain or a light in the bathroom and Carla kept hearing what she thought were rats gnawing at the walls. At this point we were so tired we couldn’t bear to wait for the hotel staff to come fix it so we just showered with no lights or a shower curtain and hit the hay.