Marseille Power Ranking. Notre Dame Sucks.

“Let’s get rich and buy our parents homes in the South of France, let’s get rich and give everybody sweaters and teach them how to dance…” – Ingrid Michaelson

Aside from my older sister’s massive girl-crush on her, I always just knew Ingrid Michaelson as a singer with a weird first name and a high voice. I can’t identify with her desires to give people sweaters, mainly because I actually love my friends? Definitely don’t really want to teach people to dance either, being a self-made man on the dance floor and all. But I can definitely understand the South of France thing now. Especially a house for my mother, who spent about 20 years being pregnant and could use a house or two on the mountains over the sea here. Unfortunately the first part of the sentence is “let’s get rich,” which poses a real issue for me. Sorry Jane!

We arrived at 5, got to the hostel, and began a trek and a half up the steepest set of stairs of all time. Our destination: “The Basilica.” You might check your maps and question, “Andrew, that doesn’t even exist in Marseille??” Well, the true name was “(something French) de Notre Dame.” As devout USC and BC fans that care about the college football world as well as the future of America in general, we refused to accept that we have anything to do with that university. Thus, the proper name was rejected. I actually didn’t even want to go there in the first place. But it’s what tourists do. Thankfully, after Goose sweat out 18 cups of coffee and 4 crepes and I had a miniature asthma attack, we reached the peak for a 360-degree view of everything ever. I definitely saw my house.Went out to dinner and watched the France game on a TV set up outside while a crowd mounted behind us, despite the general state of disgust with their team’s performance.

Woke up 5 times through the night because the old lady (creepy) next to us was moaning in her sleep which was realllllly unenjoyable to think about, and the 6^th time was for good. Went to a Mediterranean beach that was awesome because it was surrounded by mountains, not awesome because the beach itself was made of mountains of rocks and the bones of my feet are now clearly visible. But still - very cool.

Anddd then my camera just said, “Andrew – you know what’s going to make you really mad? When I break your memory card for no apparent reason and all those pictures you took of a place you might never get to visit again don’t work! HAHAHA!” Sooo sorry about that, fans.

But essentially, minus the shoddy camera work, this is what we saw:

Hostel – 8

Nice spot with a cool location by the port. The showers actually had doors, everything worked, and I had two free suckers from the front desk.

Food – 7.5.
Nothing special, really. Had some awesome Italian food for dinner, but that’s like saying American food is awesome because the Chinese is phenomenal. It’s cheating? The post-game crepes were the saving grace.

Sites – 9

The only big knock was that Marseille has seemingly used Omaha as a model for how to approach construction, which is something like: “Blow the entire city up and we’ll go from there I guess? I don’t know, just make sure we blow it all up at once.” So the sidewalks were so narrow I thought for sure I was getting clipped by a moped and dragged for miles. But the views in between walks were pretty awesome.

Best Site - 9

“The Basilica.” Again, I would never generally give any award to anything with the words ‘Notre’ or ‘Dame’ in it unless it had something to do with corruption or losing, but this was exceptional, and happened to be the only attraction we got to go inside. So congrats ___ ____ de Notre Dame, you finished 1^st out of 1, just like the football “powerhouse” from 1920-1940 (GOT ‘EM!). Additionally, this Notre Dame was on top of a mountain and America’s Notre Dame is in a cellar/hell. I’ll stop. A full point was subtracted from their initial 9.5, .5 for ‘Notre’ and .5 for ‘Dame’ being in the name.

Nightlife – 5
Marseille is comparable to a 6’5, 245 pound black guy that runs a 4.3 40 time and decides to pursue the drug trade. Or academics. Lost NFL potential. But the potential is there nonetheless. The town was a little dead considering their country was playing to stay alive in Eurocup, which is literally a matter of life and death for many countries. Nonetheless, every restaurant, no matter how fancy, had it on TV. Tuesday night problems.

So as we cruise into Nice right now, Marseille cruises into the power rankings with a 38. Also, for the record, this is the coolest train ride I’ve ever been on. Take that with a grain of salt – I’ve only been on NYC’s subways, Boston’s T, Chicago’s L, and a 12 hour train to Denver as a kid when I just played with action figures in the corner for at least 11 of those. There’s something about whipping through mountains and farms overlooking the ocean and not sitting next to people who smell like cough syrup and look like they want to mug me that’s pretty refreshing.

The rankings:
Madrid – 44

Barca – 43.5

Marseille – 38

Narbonne - 36