ERASMUS Student Pick-Up

Hannah has spent the last year in Marseille in the south of France on an ERASMUS exchange programme. Which is basically an excuse for her to 'study' abroad and take lots of mini trips though Europe. For us it was a excuse to road trip to Marseille to pick Hannah and all her stuff up from Lumini University. 

With the car, we took the Euro Tunnel and headed to Arras for our first stop over, a cute little town with all the usual shops you would expect in a French town. I really like that you can travel just across the channel and get to a whole different country, food and weather.

We had planned to take a morning to look at Dijon, but thanks to a flat battery we spent the morning waiting for a VW mechanic to come and help us start the car. Thank you Novotel Leon for free Internet.

Marseille isn't the prettiest city in the south of France, yet I found the surrounding towns very quaint. Marseille and surrounding areas are famous for soap, lavender, the Calanques and Bouillabaisse (fish soup). All of which we bought, smelt, walked on and ate while we were there. The lavender wasn't out in full bloom, maybe just another week and it would have been so pretty driving though the mountain roads.

One last stop over in Dijon before a very long drive back to Milton Keynes. The Euro Tunnel check-in software is pretty smart, at the time when you book the ticket, you have to enter in the licence plate so when you drive up to the check-in counters in Folkestone or Calais the software will recognise your booking and print out your boarding time, no need to speak to anyone.

Photos...

Southern France