Palais Longchamp

Good day. Finally did some more cultural/sightseeing stuff in Marseille. I was worried I'd spend a whole year here and forget to do touristy stuff in the city that I spend most of my time in.

Hannah and I found a quiet park in the middle of the city and it was such a relief from the noise of downtown. It is the park surrounding Palais Longchamp. Apparently at some point it was a zoo but it is at least shut down for the winter, if not permanently, we couldn't tell. The cages were really overgrown and there were no animals (besides pigeons) to be found.

We're slightly suspicious of the whole situation because when we visited the Natural History Museum a little later, many of the dead animals were labeled as coming from that zoo. Wonder if it went something like this: "Man, I'm sick of feeding these dumb animals and cleaning up after them all the time. Hey, I wonder if we'd make more money if we stuffed them all and made a museum instead!"

But the museum did have an awesome animal exhibition. There were not signs saying otherwise so I touched a seal. It was furry. I was so not expecting that.

Oh, and on the way to the city, I overheard a French girl singing "Summertime Blues" in the train and it made me laugh a lot. I've never heard a country song with a French accent before.

We also ended up sitting beside an American expat on the train home. He is from North Carolina and his Southern accent was so strong (mixed with a New York and French accent) that it was hard to even understand his English. He's been here 20 years and he kept slipping back into French accidentally. His kid was bilingual and it's so cool to hear kids talk in one language but obviously understand the parent when they talk to them in another.

It's weird how small the world is.