The Night from H.E. Double Hockeysticks

We were warned. A few times. By friends and by family. To be wary of Marseilles. We thought that by staying outside the city, and booking on Expedia we could avoid the perils of Marseilles. I'm typing this blog entry from Provence in a Best Western that we had not planned to stay in. We are here because of a REALLY BAD experience we had in Marseilles.
Our first mistake was trying to stay near Marseilles. We have booked really cheap hotels before with Expedia for this trip, and have had really good experiences. But not last night.
The place had a gated entry in a very shoddy part of town. But it was dark and late and the kids were DONE being in the car. And the place was already paid for (thanks Expedia.)
So we make our way in to find out it is completely booked, but we have a reservation and they give us connecting rooms. Which is good. The rooms are disgusting. Which is bad. Questionably clean. Mildewed, moldy and rusted bathrooms. No AC - which we are getting pretty used to at this point. But each room has one window (no screens of course) that opens in to the room that faces the outdoor hallway. As we walked to our rooms, I thought it strange that I was able to see in to other people's rooms so easily through the windows. And it's probably 90 degrees inside the rooms, so leaving the windows closed isn't really an option. We sort of settle in, with Ed in our room and the other 3 kids in the adjoining room. Brian had the foresight to move the computers over to the far side of the room away from the window; but honestly at this point I'm more worried about bedbugs (which there weren't any of) than anything else because 1) We're not in Marseilles, we're outside of it and 2) it's a gated hotel entrance.
We all go to bed and we all try to sleep. I wake up to someone trying to break into our room through the window and take the stuff off the table under it. I don't know what woke me up, but I saw the person and I automatically yelled/growled at him and he took off. My yelling woke Brian up and I jumped out of bed to see what was going on. I threw my clothes on and ran down to the office and hysterically started telling the "manager" what had happened. He took off running to our room to check it out for himself and after several minutes of not communicating in French I asked if he spoke Italian and we switched to that. It seems that there is a problem of local kids jumping the fence and breaking into the rooms. I am beyond upset at this point and I don't really know how I was able to communicate to him, but I did. I'm super worried about my kids and anything happening to them. He assured me that nothing would, and he would keep an eye on things for the rest of the night. He did advise us to move anything away from the windows. I replied that we were locking the windows. Yep, in the 90 degree heat.
After reassuring Colin and Aidan that everything was OK, Brian came back to bed and comforted me. I was pretty much FREAKING OUT and I was ready to get everyone up at this point and get in the car. But it was past midnight; Julia and Edwin were sleeping and we really didn't have anywhere else to go.
So we sucked it up. Sweated it out. Didn't get a lot of sleep. Packed up (after eating the free breakfast of course) and bailed. Tried to get our money back from f**cking Expedia, but c'est la vie, it probably won't happen.
So we found Arles. In Provence. A Best Western with AC and a pool.
What can I say, I'm a Best Western kind of gal. California and all that good stuff. More later about Provence....