31 October, 2006

The Calanques, Marseille

I took this past weekend to go to Marseille with David's friends Jeff and Carole. We stayed with Jeff's brother Pierre-Remy who has a cute little apartment overlooking the town and the sea. Paradise anyone?

The climbing in the Calanques was crazy. It took over two hours of pretty tough freaky hiking/traversing to get to the base of the climb we did on the second day. Relieved to finally be at the climb, we proceeded to climb 4 pitches of really runout but beautiful climbing. It's so runout that most of the local climbers treat it like a mixed climb and place gear in between the bolts. I had some nuts...which i was really glad to have on many occasions. Of course I was really scared but the fact that we were basically climbing right out of the sea often distracted me into euphoria.

After the day I was so dehydrated and starving that all I could think about was food. We went back to Remy's and made a whole fish. We had bought it fresh that morning. It was the most amazing fish I've ever had. So fresh. It was a little odd to just have a whole fish laying out on the dinner table...but I got over it. I was also forced into trying fish eggs. Our fish was pregnant so lucky us right? I don't know, they're weird. I'm going to get a little detailed here, but they're kind of a big mass and obviously don't look like eggs anymore. Instead they kind of look like a mushy brain. Mmmmm. But they eat brain here too so that wouldn't gross them out too much :) They're really strong. Not horrible but I won't be feinding for them any time soon.

After two days of climbing I have to admit that my body was exhausted. But it was ok because there was of course a giant sea within 10 minutes walk from Remy. So we sat on the beach all afternoon, read, swam...the things you do at a beach. And yes for all of you that were wondering, most of the women do actually sunbath topless. Oddly, it is way more common to see someone over say 35 or 40 topless. In the younger generation it's becoming obsolete. It was different I'll tell you that.

We had a little accident with the other camera. It took a fall from the first bolt of our climb last week. Unfortunately, the climb started on a ledge that was already 40ft off the ground. And then there was the big rocky hill it bounced down. So I'm working on getting that fixed for the next trip. I do have pictures from this trip they're just on Jeff and Carole's cameras so I'll have to wait a bit to get them.

Well, that's all the news from Lyon. I'm leaving for Austria and Slovenia in a few days so it may be a week or two before you see anything new.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just happy is was the camera and not you that was bouncing off the rocks....love you and miss you.

7:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

thanks for my camera !!!

8:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jenn I miss you so much!!!!!

12:28 AM  

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