Quiet

Once upon a time, (in Paris), I lived directly above an autoroute. I think it's called an "interstate" in American English, but um, since France doesn't have states, it can't have interstates. So I'll go with autoroute. Anyway, it was noisy. All.of.the.time. Sue-Wee and I couldn't leave the windows open for a long period of time because it was just too loud. You couldn't really have a conversation while they were open. Even with them closed, it was loud. I slept with a fan on for two whole years because of the noise. In fact, it was so loud, that once, my dad started imitating the emergency sirens along with them because he could hear them, via Skype, through my closed windows. LOUD.

So I sort of developed this intolerance for street noise. I can handle people noise. I can handle animal noise. Goodness gracious, I can even handle bug noise. But honking and sirens and motorcycles revving up and down the street...I can't handle it. The introvert nerve in the front part of my brain sort of explodes into an immediate headache.

A friend encouraged me many moons ago to create a list of what I desired in my apartment-to-be, and to pray over the list. I did just that. At the top of the list: Quiet.
I didn't expect to get everything on my list. And while I was apartment hunting, I really thought through which of those things were important and why, and which did I not care about so much. The QUIET and NEAR THE METRO seemed indispensable, as well as the one about the heat, but the rest...those were all perks. Bonuses. Gravy. I'd take any one or two.

When I saw the ad for the place that ended up being mine, I was concerned about the noise level. The ad had posted a picture from the front living room window, so I knew exactly where the apartment was, and over what street. With it being THAT close to the main hub of tourism for Marseille, well...there's no way that place would be quiet.

The Mediterranean cruise ships shuttle all their cruisers to that street right there. The boat to go to Chateau d'If (from the Count of Monte Cristo) leaves from right there. The little touristy train that drives you up to the church on the hill departs from right there. RIGHT THERE is where nearly all the action in Marseille happens. Practically impossible for it to be quiet.

But when they remodeled the apartment, they put in double-paned windows. With them shut, it's really quiet. Amazingly quiet. I can hear the occasional siren, but nothing too terrible. With them open...well, that's another story. And in Marseille, windows are open from around April-May through Septemberish. (I've already started sleeping with them open.) I ended up sacrificing one of the most important things on my list for the pretty. Oh, the pretty.

(Can I just pause and say how awesome God is? If you substitute "high ceilings" for the brick wall and "crown molding" for the wooden beams, and He gave me 12 out of 15 things on the list. He is good!!!)

About a week before I signed the contract, some construction began down at the Vieux-Port. At first it seemed like a small thing. This past week, it turned into a full blown, major thing. If you look at the left side of the photo, you can see that they have completely TORN UP the road.
I jokingly said that I could handle all this construction if they were making the road a pedestrian street. Otherwise, I hope it's all done by the time I move in. But to hope for a pedestrian street? How could they cut off the main hub of Marseille, as well as the street that is "the backbone" of the city (the Canebière), from traffic? I convinced myself that the construction was just repaving, or fixing the sewer system, or something along those lines, and that a few weeks from now it would all be back to normal.

Then, during a week of being hit with a bombardment of bad news, I was walking along and saw this billboard. For you non-French speakers, it says, "The base of The Canebière without cars." The picture shows the what the final product will look like. I nearly began to cry for joy right in the middle of the street!!! I needed this good news right at the moment that it came.
I went home and looked up the website for the project. (The two photos below are both from that website.) Oh my. Oh my goodness. God is so good to me!!! Below, you can see the plan for where all the pedestrian-only (except for buses and taxis) will be. My apartment is just on the little road offshoot in the top middle-rightish of the photo. I don't know what will happen to my actual street, since it feeds into what will be pedestrian-only, but oh my. Surely this will cut down on the traffic noise!
This is a drawing of what it will look like once it's all done. How long it will take for it to get done? Haha, who knows! Marseille is set to be the "European Capital of Culture" for 2013, so there all these projects going on around town to get it cleaned up and ready for the tourism that will supposedly begin in just 8 short months...but everyone jokes that the projects won't be finished until probably 2014. Ha.

Whenever it'll be done...I'm so happy about it. I might have a loud summer as they jack-hammer up that whole road, but I'll take it if it means all the years after that it's quiet. Thank you Lord!