Day Twentyseven - Jun 17, 2012

Ventimiglia, Italy to Marseilles, France

High Point: Sitting among the rooftops on our surprise terrace

Low Point: Leaving Italy for good after three weeks

Miles By Train: 153

Today's Weather: Sunny everywhere we looked. In the mid 70's. Very pleasant

Tonight's Lodging: Hotel Vertigo

Touristic Events: None really

Travel Tip: When traveling by train, staying near the train station is excellent. These aren't always the best neighborhoods

Daily Didactic

The day began relaxed and slow with breakfast at the Hotel Calypso and a 10:40 train to Nice-Ville and then on to Marseille. The train ride was four and half hours or so. Theresa (not surprisingly) painted and Brian caught up on a couple days of web pages and read. We had read that Marseille was 'gritty' and not really somewhere you'd want to tourist. These folks had obviously never been to Naples. We were pleasantly surprised at a very nice train station and (after a little bit of unecessary walking) realized our housing was a stone's throw from it. Tonight's digs are the Hotel Vertigo, really a hostel with some private rooms. We ended up on the top floor, in a great room with a slightly scary terrace and fascinating views in every direction. We were ready for food and couldn't find an open market for our life on a late Sunday afternoon. The train area appears to be a neighborhood of mostly middle eastern folks and we headed into a restaurant with our minds on couscous or such. We kid you not, at this point in the afternoon all they were making was (wait for it...) pizza. It was excellent. We eventually found a small market and grabbed some snacks for later and retreated back to the top of Hotel Vertigo for a relaxing evening of reading and staring out from our terrace.