skip ahead to marseille!

hey! we are in marseille now, and spain is long gone.

on our last day in spain, we went to sagrada familia and went inside and it was marvellous! it is so tall and the tallest parts arent even finished yet. there is a museum about the construction underneath the church and its cool to see the 1/10 models of everything and follow the progress. again the towers were closed but thats not such a big deal. we attempted to go to the picasso museum but the lineup was way too long for the desire that we had to visit it so we left and instead went to the barcelona aquarium! their big thing is that they have 3 pretty big sharks floating around in an enormous tank with a bunch of fish that i dont know why they dont eat. but the coolest things, for us, were their THREE octopuses! they also had a fish that crawled around the bottom on legs and ther crazy looking animals! it was fun. we had an easy night of chinese food followed by a light and music show at the fountains in front of the art gallery that shot water jets up to 45 feet high!

the next day we had a long travel day, taking 3 separate trains from barcelona to arles. it was pretty uneventful but we were very happy to finally arrive. arles is a pretty small town in the south of france that has some old roman stuff. apparently when the romans owned gaul (francem spain & britain) arles was the capital of gaul. they have a 2 story coliseum that is over 100m in diameter and is still used for bullfights, very cool.

on our first day in arles, we left arles to go to pont du gard via avignon. pont du gard is a 2000 year old aqueduct that is 48 meters tall and is pretty spectacular! it took us over 2 hours to get there and get back via train and bu, but i think it was worth it. we were so so tired after that and totally crashed for a nap before dinner. we ate at a nice looking cafe that night, and things were lovely until they brought lisa's shrimps out with heads still on and in a really gross sauce. oops. we forgot that here you have to order shrimps without heads if you dont want the heads to still be on.

the next day we wandered around arles and went into the coliseum and then spent the rest of the day finding me new sunglasses because mine broke. we left arles for marseille by train and spent last night exploring the beautiful boaty old port. today i got my hair cut, and soon we will be taking a ferry to some of the islands in the harbour.

its kind of a relief to be back in a country where we can communicate. when we were planning the trip i underestimated how much more comfortable it is when you can speak the language.

bye for now!

simon