Marseille, Alpes-Côte d’Azu, France – 4 Day Trip

Arriving in Marseille to watch the France Formula 1 Grandprix at the start of my month-long Europe Trip. This was going to be my toughest jetlag challenge as a child (not a baby) screamed (for fun) the entire 8-hour flight to Amsterdam from Minneapolis.

At the time of writing this post EUR 1 = USD 1.22

Day 1 – Arrive & Try to Stay Awake 06.21.2018

Arriving on a Thursday we decided to skip the Formula 1 first day of practice and will go tomorrow. We took an uber from the airport to our Airbnb which was about €20. We checked into our Airbnb, which you can see here. If you’re new to Airbnb use my referral code for $50 off your first stay. Trying to conserve energy we went to Brasserie du VII ieme for dinner and drinks. We also checked out the small beach, Plage des Catalans.

Day 2 – Attempt to See the Grand Prix Practice 06.22.2018

This was the most unorganized event I have ever attended in my life and I do not recommend anyone go to this Grand Prix unless you’re willing to spend the money to stay at the hotel attached to the race. Mass Transit does not go out to the Grand Prix and the other option is to pay €80 and take a bus, but you have no freedom on when you can leave and arrive, they control the schedule. So we decided to take a train out to Gare d’Aubagne and then Uber our way to the race track at Le Castellet.

Uber does not pick up from this race track (at least at the time) so we had to get our driver’s number and text him when we were ready to be picked up. Le Castellet is about an hour’s drive (with traffic) from Marseille. When we arrived Police had all the roads blocked off, so we had to walk 5 km (3.2 mi) to the race track, by the time we got there the practice round was just finishing so we turned around and met our Uber after our two-hour round trip walk.

Once we got back we walked down to the harbor/city center to see the formula one fan fest. They had parts of the road blocked off so formula one cars could drive up down the street.

Day 3 – Grand Prix Qualifying 06.23.2018

Making our second attempt at the race track, we called our driver again and had him pick us up at our Airbnb and drive straight out. This time we tried a new strategy to have our driver drop us off at the car park. It worked but we did spend a good hour in traffic just to get to the car park.

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We were not fully successful as this process took a long time and we ended up walking about 10km again, but we learned and got to see qualifying. We headed back to Marseille to walk around the city and have dinner, after dining out at my fourth place the stereotype of French people being rude was starting to become statistically relevant haha.

Day 4 – Grand Prix Final 06.24.2018

We finally figured out the best strategy to getting to this track and we were able to enjoy all the events that day. For those that are interested Lewis Hamilton won this race. Not much else to talk about here, we ended the night at Hippopotamus Steakhouse and got ready to head to Nice by train the next day.

Have you had any bad flight experience or been to large organized events, drop it in the comments below.

Cheers!