A sunny weekend

The weather has been great this weekend! The smell of fresh grass, sea and sunscreen are in the air wherever we go. Today we got up early, or what one would call early for a Sunday morning. We hired some bikes from the bike rentals that are everywhere in town. Marseille has this great system, with a special pass you can hire a bicycle for only 1 euro per week. So we got up and went down to the supermarket, over there we bought ourselves some lunch and installed ourselves in park Borély.

This is a parc is built around a chateau, it was created in the 17th century by a ship owner and merchant called Joseph Borely. Next to the parc you can find a botanical garden, with a nice collection of plants from different parts of the world, there is a Japanese garden, a Chinese garden and even a little bit of desert. A fee has to be payed to get into this garden, but is is affordable and a lovely thing to do on a pretty day, if you are into this kind of thing of course!

Today we only stayed into the public area of the park, where there is a lot of activity. Special carts can be hired to bike around as a family, people are roller skating and biking. Very often people come together to give parties for their child's birthday, they bring a pick-nick and games. It is a great day out for the children!

After the park we went to the beach and talked about opportunities for the future, things we want to do, places we can go. It seemed the perfect day for a discussion of this sort. This week I have seen a lot of people swimming, so I had to quickly feel the water, in my opinion it is still a bit too cold for a swim, but it is warming up, so it will get better soon. It was time to head back, so we got on our bikes again and got home within 15 minutes. I am very glad I finally tried this biking rent system. I was always a bit scared about biking in Marseille, but it is doable, people in cars take distance if they see you. The traffic is still hectic but that is a matter of paying attention. The photo below was taken close to our house, I do not think I could ever get used to how beautiful the sea is here! This picture shows a view on chateau d'if, where the famous book of the Count of Monte Cristo was based on. further in the back you can see îles du Frioul. We have not yet visited îles du frioul but I hope to do so soon!