Meyreuil (and Paris) and Marseille (week 23)Pictured here are the two tallest man-made structures in France. On the left is the taller one, possibly recognizable to you (hint: it is is Paris). On the right is the second-tallest structure: the chimney of the the Provence Power Plant in Meyreuil. It is visible from anywhere along the Mont Ste. Victoire south face (including from our terrace). I have scaled the picture to give you a feel for their relative heights, i.e. the Tour Eiffel is only a few feet taller! Just a little bit of trivia for your reading pleasure.
The picture of the power plant is from the car travelling along the D6 highway, which we take to get to Marseille and the TGV station. This week we had to go into Marseille to the OFII (Office of Immigration) to have our physicals for our long-term visa validation. A Canadian passport is sufficient for multi-entry to a maximum of 90 days in the Shengen border-control area. However, since we're staying longer than that, if we want to re-enter the Shengen zone (say, if we had to go to Canada, the U.K., or Andorra) after leaving it, we needed our visa validated. As far as we can tell, it's main purpose is to keep tuberculosis out of the country - we had to have a medical that was a chest X-ray, a doctor listening to our breathing for 2 minutes, and a few desultory questions about whether we had daily medications. They didn't seem to care if we had AIDS, SARS, or ebola.
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