Bonjour friends.
Because I’m the luckiest of ducks, within a week of my mom leaving, I
got a visit from my best of friends, Addie! My very first travel buddy in
Europe, my roommate of four years and just the most beautiful person you’ll
ever meet. I miss her lots now that she’s back in the Golden State.
She came to visit the weekend of the 10th because she was
enjoying a visit to one of her favorite places, Scotland. She arrived on
Thursday afternoon and I took the train to Marseille to pick her up. Then, we
took the metro so she could see the Vieux Port! It’s such a magnificent view, I
thought that we should see it because we were so close. After that, we stopped
at Starbucks where I ate lunch and Addie had a frappuccino (riveting details, I
know). Then we trained home together, enjoying a nice long talk and the views
of the mountains and sea from the train. That night we just stayed in, made
some pasta, and watched NCIS: LA in English (one of the few channels that I am
able to turn back to English).
The next day (Friday) was much more interesting. It was a beautiful
sunny day and we had a lazy breakfast before embarking on our mission: to climb
to the top of Mount Faron via the téléphérique,
which I had awkwardly been calling the téléphonique.
Granted, an easy mistake. A télépherique is
basically a cable car that is only attached to cables on the top and it carries
you above the ground, rather high, via just these cables, to your destination.
As some of you may know, Addie is not too keen on heights, but she was down to
do this (because there was a wildcat zoo on top of the hill!) and I was very
happy she wanted to go up. We both were rather glad we did it because the view
was superb. It was a bit scary but mostly exhilarating to be so high up,
zipping through the trees.
Once we got to the top, we went looking for the wild cat zoo and ran
into Emma and a bunch of other assistants who had left about an hour earlier to
climb the mountain on foot. After a quick chat, we walked on some confusing but
beautiful paths until we hit the zoo. We bought a téléphérique/zoo pass for 14 euros so it wasn’t too bad. Once in
there, we saw a ton of animals: lions, tigers, bears (just kidding there were
no bears), jaguars, panthers, mountain lions, other cats, baboons, lemurs, and
even raccoons. We thought that seeing raccoons in a zoo was bizarre but
raccoons aren’t native to Europe, which we didn’t know. At home, you could see
a raccoon on the street but in France you would never so I guess they want to
see them in the zoos. Both Addie and I had mixed feelings about the zoo. The
cages were not very spacious and didn’t seem to be well-maintained. At the
baboon cage, a man and his family were throwing pieces of bread into the cage
non-stop. In the U.S. that would be taboo and we were uncomfortable so I told
him it wasn’t a good idea. He just brusquely said, “They sell this in the gift
shop.” Unconvinced, I went to the front on our way out and asked if that was
allowed, sure it wasn’t. He said “Oh, les croquants?” meaning bits of food, I
said “yes” and he said “Oh yes they sell them at the gift shop.” So apparently,
zoo rules aren’t universal. It really bothered us because it just seemed so
rude, especially the way people in the zoo in general were yelling at the
animals. A lady even brought in a small dog. To the wildcat zoo. You heard me
right. That sounds like the worst idea ever, notwithstanding the stereotypical
hatred between cats and dogs. But the dog started barking and the cats got all
worked up, pacing and starting to look really hungry, especially the tiger.
Rule #1 of zoos is don’t bring in animals, I mean seriously. Now I don’t know
if she brought it in sneakily or if they just don’t care, but it was strange
and just seemed to exemplify the attitude everyone had at the zoo. Others were
yelling, shaking the cage, etc. Although I didn’t realize it, I think zoos in
the U.S. or maybe people are (normally) a lot more serious about respecting the
animals.
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After leaving the zoo, we ran back into the other assistants just as
they were leaving to take the car back down. We decided to sit and drink an aperitif of wine and we also got little
snacks (peanuts and toast with tapenade). Then we walked around a little more,
looking at the insane view of Toulon and the war memorial.
Finally, we took the téléphérique back down the mountain. I hope to
spend more time up there, it’s like a little park away from the world.
That night we walked down to the port for dinner. We ate at a little
Italian port where we could watch the sunset on the boats. I had pasta
arrabiatta and it was really spicy but good, and Addie had a pizza aux 4
fromages (Roquefort, mozzarella, gruyere, and parmesean) and it was really good
too. I would definitely go back. It was a nice relaxing evening until we were
visited by a random guy from South Africa. He heard we spoke English, he was
more than tipsy, and he thought he would sit right down with us, kebab and beer
in hand. It was funny at first and I wasn’t too bothered. His friend, whose
name was Marius (I have no idea what the other guy’s name was), kept trying to
get him to leave, telling him he was being rude, to no avail. Finally, Addie
and I got annoyed when he got a call and started talking about us to his friend
“Archie.” They apparently worked on a yacht and had to get back but the ferry
was closed. After like 15 minutes, Marius was able to peel his friend away as
the people around us looked on but said nothing. They spoke in some other
language other than English to each other, which I thought was interesting.
Then I looked it up and it turns out S. Africa has tons of official languages.
So that’s cool!
We walked back to my place and finished the night with a watching of
Hocus Pocus as well as the Halloween episode of Boy Meets World (our tradition J ). Emma had never seen Hocus Pocus so she watched
with us! It’s good to share Halloween cheer!
The next day was Sunday. Addie had a cold and it had gotten much worse
so we ended up relaxing all of Sunday. I can’t remember most of what we did. We
went shopping and made dinner: autumnal soup and bread. Then we watched Halloweentown
at night and another episode of Boy Meets World because we couldn’t get the
Buffy Halloween episode to work.
The next day was Monday and I had to work. We ended up just relaxing as well and early Tuesday morning she was off. It was rough to say goodbye to my best friend. But here is a pretty picture of Mount Faron.
