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On Saturday morning, we flew from Athens to Paris using Easyjet.  This is my first experience flying with Easyjet, and I have to say that I don't have the best opinion of them after this one flight.  The flight was delayed 40 minutes when we got to the airport, and boarding was SO SLOW that the flight took off an hour later than scheduled.  I sat next to a very annoying group of people.  Thank goodness the flight was only about 3 1/2 hours.  The flight attendants are very non-chalant and somewhat professional.
I'm traveling with my friend Sarah, whio is studying in Athens in the same program as me, this entire week, but we flew with another friend that was going to spend the week in Paris.  Her boyfriend met us at the airport and gave us an intro to the metro and RER system.

Our hostel for Saturday night was in Montmarte, on a very busy street.  For my first hostel experience, it wasn't too bad.  The area was a bit iffy, but we had an early train to catch so we weren't out late.  That afternoon, we went to see the Sacre Coeur church, but we got lost on the way.  A very nice, older Parisian man saw that we were lost and led us to the base of the hill where the church is located.  French people are nice!  The Sacre Coeur has beautiful architecture and on the inside has a lot of shrines to different saints aroudn the peri,eter of the church.  We happened to be walking around inside when a service began, and the acoustics of the church made the nuns voices sound so pure.  It was beautiful.  When we left, it started to rain, and I hadn't brought my umbrella, so Sarah bought one, and we continued our exploration of Paris.  We walked to the Place de le Republique, saw the Marie du 10eme, then stopped by a supermarket to buy sandwiches for dinner.  I noticed that in Greece, everyone sits outside at the cafes drinking coffee, but here people sit at the cafes and bratisseries drinking beer or wine.

Sunday morning we took the train to Marseille.  Our hostel was much nicer there, and I met Christen and her friends there.  They were coming from Nice.  Marseille is the second largest city in France and was originally a Greek colony, but you can't tell.  There we saw the Vieux Port, which is just the main port, the Notre Dame du Gard, which is a church dedicated to the fishermen of the area, so it has a nautical theme, the Ville Charite, which was an orphanage and is now a museum, and the Nuveau Catedral, which was stunning.  I had a crepe with Nutella for dinner. :) I probably won't have another one while I'm here- it was way too sweet.
Monday morning, we took a ferry to see the Chateau d'If, which used to house a prison and was made famous by being the prison in Count of Monte Cristo. 

After that we walked along the shore- the weather was beautiful, warm and sunny.  Next we went to the Palace de Longchamps, which is a fountain/park/museum.  This was my favorite part of the trip to Marseille.  I'll post pictures later, since I don't have my laptop with me to get the pictures off my camera.  For dinner, I wanted to get the boulebaise, the fish soup that Marseille is known for, but the restaurant we went to was out of mussels so I had just the fish broth instead.  Close enough.  It was very salty, but I'm glad I tried it.  Earlier that day, we had also bought navettes, which are cookies that are only made in Marseille.  I think they are flavored with lavendar.  I like them, and even bought a chocolate version the next day.  In the evening, we went to a pub and got some French beer, 1664.

This morning, we visited some more palaces: Palais de le Bourse and Palais d'les Artes.  They were not as impressive as Longchamps, but still nice.  Then we saw the Fontaine Castellene and bought some shoes. :)
We caught our train back to Paris, found our hostel, which is in the Latin Quarter, and now we will do some more exploring.  It is very cold, about 50°, and raining.  Hopefully it'll warm up some tomorrow!