Marseille

I've been fortunate to have spent the past couple of weeks with a lovely family and now it's the end of my time here in France. From Parthenay, it took around 10 hours to get to Couges where the family normally stay. One thing I appreciate about London is the frequency buses and trains, instead of running every hour as it does im this town..
I luckily got dropped off at Aubagne ( another town which is around 20 drive from here) in order to get to Marseille St Charles, which is around 20 minutes on the train.
I had the loveliest day and spent it at Notre Dame Cathedral which was about a 20 minute walk from Vieux Port. The walk up was steep and you'd definately need a strong pair of legs for it!
Was it worth it? You can see for yourself. Despite the climb in the strong heat and being drenched in sweat. The view was idyllic and truly picturesque. Within the cathedral there is a crypt and even a restaurant.

Travelling around France

This summer I decided I wanted to get away from London and try to practise some French. My aim was to get to a region calles Poitiers. I contacted a French family and volunteered to provide private tuitions to their son whilst I'd receive free food and accomodation in return.
But just how was I going to get there?
Eurostar was going to cost around 200 euros. Pretty unaffordable for me. My only option....
The coach. I didn't mind as I still have about 7 weeks left of school. I found a life saver website called rometorio which is the Googlemaps of international travel. Yippee.
It was going to take me 8 hours on the ID bus. I had never heard of this. But would def recommend it. I arrived at 6am at Victoria station to hopefully arrive at 4.50pm in Paris. 4.50pm became 6.50pm due to the traffic. Horrible! But in terms of the comfort. It was really good, lovely reclining leather chairs. It also helped that we took the tunnel and did not go via Dover! I would say I'd recommend it though.

Bristol Carnival!

A friend of mine who is a fanatic of Nottinghill Carnival cannot make it there this year and so he suggested we go to Bristol Carnival. This would be my first time and I had thought to myself if London has the biggest carnival, could Bristol match up?

We got the National Express coach which was only £20 return and we were due to arrive there on Saturday 1pm and leave at Sunday at 5am! That's a lot of partying! How will we cope??
Well we sure did. We found our first sound system which was buzzing ; full of junglist vibes!
Then we moved onto the dancehall street...

Girls were doing it all from the ' one drop' to 'bruk out'!

The vibe wasn't as crazy as London's, but it had the same diversity which I love and it didn't have the dangerous air which you often find at Nottinghill. Everyone was having a drink and simply enjoying themselves!

The ride back home meant we had to wait for the coach.We partied until 4 then got the coach at 5.30am.
We were shattered!