During my last couple weeks of teaching, I was fortunate to go on some weekend trips! Since I have Fridays off, this is something I could have been doing more of over the course of my time here, but I valued my time in Grenoble so it wasn’t a very common occurrence. Regardless, I’m happy I got to take advantage of a couple weekends when I visited Copenhagen with the Good sisters and then Marseille with my sister and her boyfriend.
Copenhagen aka one of the happiest cities in the world and I’m not surprised
Julia is one of my best friends from high school who has since left good ole Minne for the west coast. I hadn’t seen her in over a year before we reunited in Copenhagen which made this weekend that much better. She, her two sisters (Margaret and Sarah) and I met in Copenhagen on a Friday morning. Margaret had studied abroad in Copenhagen when she was in college so she was our tour guide for the weekend, and with the help of bikes as well as her expertise, we were able to cover a lot of ground and see lots of sights in a short period of time. Some highlights included the famous strip – Nyhavn, the Copenhagen street food market, Vor Frelsers Kirke, the “free town” Christiania and a delicious birthday dinner for Sarah (shout out to the Mr. and Mrs. Good!). Beautiful weather helped make our weekend a huge success, and even though our stay was short, I fell a little bit in love with this city. *Sidenote* Most of the bikes in Copenhagen have locks built on to the back wheel which can be locked and unlocked through bluetooth on your phone. The locks also have GPS which deters theft. Why isn’t this a thing everywhere? So slick.
Recommendations: Tight (the restaurant) – delish, Copenhagen Street Food – you could go here for every meal and still have plenty of things you want to try. Chillin along Nyhavn.
Marseille aka gritty city that doesn’t deserve its terrible reputation
The following weekend, I took the shorter trip down to Marseille where I met Anna and Sam! Marseille is notorious for being crime-ridden and dangerous. My roommate must have warned me at least 5 times to *watch my purse closely* because he was confident it would get stolen if I wasn’t very careful. Anna, Sam and I all agreed that Marseille is not deserving of its bad rap…we didn’t feel any less secure than we would in any other big European city. Every city has areas that you should avoid at night, and in pretty much every big city, you need to be mindful of your belongings so in other words, we didn’t feel any less secure than we would have anywhere else. Marseille has a lot of character and several beautiful sites, and we liked it quite a bit! We hiked through the Calanques, watched the sunset over the city whilst sipping wine, spent some time at the beach, and ate an amazing moroccan meal. This was Sam’s first time in France, and I think it made a good first impression 🙂
Recommendations: Calanques for stellar views and AHWASH for a life-changing meal
Bonjour, Grenoble! 
Big fan of Copenhagen – it really is a happy place! Very cool about the bikes, I wish mine did that! I should check out Marseille this summer, not too far from Switzerland
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