French Adventure 3: Marseilles and the Journey Back to Spain

We finally bid goodbye to Manosque (which, by the way, just so happened to be extremely close to where Craig had lived in Gap) and headed to Marseilles by bus on our own. We had planned on taking a train from Marseilles to Barcelona because the flight from Marseilles to Madrid had been too expensive. As it was a national holiday in Spain, however, it was impossible to find train tickets. So we had tickets for a 9 hour bus ride to Barcelona the next day, and we had one evening and one morning to spend in Marseilles.

Marseilles is beautiful in a haunting way. It is dirty and dangerous and, most of all, fishy, but the history of this oldest European port city is nearly tangible and makes the city feel, above all else, ALIVE. I truly enjoyed it and would love to go back when the sun is shining. Marseilles is sunny 300 days of the year, and we happened to be there during a heavy downpour.

In the evening we walked around the harbor and settled into a restaurant to enjoy the Marseille specialty dish, La Bouillabaise, which is a rock fish broth served with several kinds of fresh caught and cooked fish, cheese, croutons, and sauce.

The next morning, after another long, rain-soaked walk around the port, we caught our Barcelona bound bus, which we were assured would drop us at the Barcelona airport.

9 hours later we arrived not at the airport, but the train station. No problem! We took the last train of the night to the airport. By this time it was 11:30 PM and we had all the time in the world before our 5 am flight. We looked and looked, though, and there was no sign of our airline check-in counter! Finally we approached the info desk and with a hiss of air between her teeth the attendant informed us that our flight was actually departing from Girona, a city an hour and 45 minutes away, which operated under the "Barcelona" name. This was my luck now, as the Harrison luck had obviously faded away.

We took a bus to the Plaza de Espana then caught the metro to the bus station. We missed the last bus of the night to Girona by 5 minutes, and were informed that we would have to wait until the next bus departed at 3:15 AM, and that the trip would take 1 hour. We weighed the risk of only allowed 45 minutes to check in and get through security before our flight departed, and, since we had zero other options, settled into some chairs in the tiny, freezing bus station. We considered napping since we had to work the next morning, but it was truly impossible, between the snoring men and homeless people getting kicked out of the bathrooms.

We were so relieved to finally purchase our bus tickets and board and depart. I was anxious about the tight time squeeze but dozed off here and there, listening to the various languages fly through the bus. When we heard the thump and the bus abruptly pulled over, I was not alarmed. We knew a tire must have blown, and that it would probably only take 10 minutes, max, to change the tire. No problem, I told Craig, we can still make it.

However, the bus driver did not return. Interestingly, the French, the Americans, the Canadians, the Swedish, the English sat quietly in their seats whispering predictions, while the Spanish and the Portuguese stood, gawked, yelled, and prowled the aisle in impatience.

Perhaps 15 minutes later the bus driver stepped back onto the bus, and he backed us up 20 meters or so before leaving again, gazing under the bus. He walked the dark and busy highway, peering into bushes, walking, walking, searching. The digital clock in the front of the bus climbed to 4:30. 4:45, 4:50, 5:00, 5:15, and still we sat, finally understanding what had happened as the police arrived, stopped traffic, waved in the ambulance, let the medics get to work.

Another bus pulled in after a time and we were roughly instructed to get off this bus, board the new. No more information was provided to us. We were simply dropped at the airport, where passengers from all over Europe and the Americas hit the ground running to find their flights.

By the time we finally boarded a plane we could not keep our eyes open. We notified our director we would have to miss our morning classes and slept through the flight. We numbly walked through the airport, boarded the metro, boarded the train, and woke up just in time to catch the stop for Alcala de Henares. We arrived in the city hungry, exhausted, giggling, and relieved after a 28 hour trip.