The Motto of the City of Marseille: Actibus immensis urbs fulget Massiliensis.
"By her great deeds, Marseille shines in the world".
My first night in Marseille was not a good one, but it was all my fault, as I deviated from my plan.
I had, as you know, deliberately travelled light to enable me to walk around on arriving in Marseille and choose a good hotel. However, I soon realised that I was not travelling as light as I thought I was and the bags felt very heavy once I started walking in Marseille (another lesson learned - there are different definitions of lightness depending how far you have to walk).
As I got off the shuttle coach from Marseille Airport, a french man took me under his wing and led me through the train station and pointed me towards a "good hotel" after I had spoken to him and asked for directions to where the hotels in Marseille were.
Unfortunately, when I got there carrying my heavy (light) bags I found that it was an Ibis Hotel, a hotel presumably from a french hotel chain. This was not the kind of hotel I was looking for so I decided to press on and walk myself, randomly (not a good idea) looking for a more traditional french hotel.
Well, I walked, and walked and then walked some more. Suddenly I saw a glowing neon sign proclaiming HOTEL. I was saved! I made my way rapidly through the dark, with renewed energy to arrive at the portal of the establishment. I have to say it was grim.
By this time however, I was tired, my arms ached and I would have slept in a cardboard box. I went in, was greeted by the proprietor and negotiated a room with breakfast for fifty euros. Well, I say negotiated, but he understood everything I wanted despite my pidgeon french and his pidgeon english, EXCEPT my attempts to reduce the price. At that point he didn't understand at all what I was saying. The hotel to me didn't look like it was worth 50 euros - but who knows? it was the first I had tried and maybe they are all as bad as this in france and just as expensive? (50 euros = 34 UK Pounds and 66 US Dollars).
So I took the room and it was as bad as I thought it would be. I won't go into details but at least I had a roof over my head and the prospect of breakfast in the morning. Hah, I drank the coffee, left the stale croissant and biscuit and headed off early.
So, the hotel doesn't get named, no links to its website and I hope my readers don't ever find their way there. I had happier experiences at other hotels as you will see, some were much better hotels for much less money and some were just as bad for much less money!
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Carbuncle, a writer, journalist, web author and World Wide Web publisher. I write when the muse calls and publish to the
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Carbuncle