Day 74: Marseille

November 19, 2022

It's not over 'till it's over!

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Travel of any type, whether by bicycle or not, calls on quite a few life skills. One needs to make sure there is money, of the right currency, when the transportation is leaving and from where, that the passports are stored in the right place, and literally hundreds of other things. Travel enough, and you can get quite accomplished at these things, except when you lose your wallet, have no phone that works in the given country and need to call the hotel to open the darn door, and etc. etc.

Last night, even though very tired, Dodie finished reorganizing our stuff for going on the airplane. It's quite complicated, because items need to come out of the panniers and into bags that will be carry on, and will be checked. This often involves busting apart things that had travelled on the bikes together. For example, the tire pump could be carry on but the hex keys would likely be deemed weapons, and need to be checked. Except, one specific hex hey is needed to turn the handlebars at the last moment, so don't go checking that just yet!

Ok, organized and ready to go. That's one blue bag and one handlebar bag each to carry on, and one big duffel to check. And the hex key? Don't ask! We won't need these bags until Monday, but without the organizing done now, we would not be able to waltz off and visit Marseille.

This is the time for us to ask everyone to hold off on the "Great trip - see you next time" thoughts. Quite aside from today's fascinating review of Marseille, there will be more of the same tomorrow. That will be followed by the suspense over will we get on the plane, and once in Vancouver, will we get home. Assuming that it all works, then fairly quickly will be the summary of what we thought of the trip, and then the vital statistics of how much it cost, and in what categories the money floated away. So in short, hang in there, it's not over 'till it's over!

We found our hotel yesterday while still on our bikes. We are used to that. But now how do we get to Marseille? Once there, where are we going and how do we get there? This is where the life skills begin to roll out, and I am very proud of how we did today. We got a shuttle to the Marseille train station, bought multi trip Metro passes, found the Metro and zoomed to our first target destination. What was that? The Market of course!

To walk from our hotel to the airport, we put a pin in the GPS map, for Terminal 2. But the airport very helpfully put a pin right in the ground. They probably thought it was a control tower, shows what they know!

Ah yes, bus L91 to St. Charles train station, leaving soon from dock 6. No problem! (But where do we buy a ticket?).

We didn't walk into Marseille totally blind. No, the night before we not only watched a couple of Youtubes about the place, but we fired up the "Ten Top Things to Do in Marseille" type things. These were helpful, but those who prepared them could not know how much we like markets. No problem, we also studied the "Top Markets of Marseille" type things. All this resulted in Thing One, for us, which was the Prado (Prado Street) market, said to be one of the biggest in France. We located the market on the map, found the nearest Metro station, and were off. Follow us there, and then on the rather dizzying circuit we laid down, of three other markets, two Basilicas, a quaint neighbourhood, and oh, are we tired!

Our very first impression of Marseille, formed while on the bus riding in, is that it is a big city with the matching number big roads. But beyond that, it's colour is largely off white, with the white buildings having brown tile roofs.

That was from the bus, but when we popped out of the Metro near the Prado market, we could quickly refine the impression. Like in rural Provence, most windows have shutters. But their colour is not bright but rather pale blue.

Moreover, small balconies with grill work typically front windows, which actually are doors.

And, there are an infinite number of narrow and picturesque streets.

Finally, more ordinary buildings are complemented by fancy ones, with domes and carving, and possibly palm trees.

Ok, so we popped out of the Metro, and tried to form all those impressions. But that was in the few steps before the Market!

The market, as might be expected in this port city, kicked off with many seafood stalls. Since we are not seafood eaters, we look on these more like aquarium visits, to see what is (or was) swimming around out there. Lots of the items are squishy, while others look like schools of fish, still in operation.

Ah coquilles St Jacques - pilgrimage stuff.

The market then moved into other standards, like the pears, which seem particularly good in this region, the required olives, sturdy looking bread, and those yellow pomegranates which were new to me a short time ago.

All that was swell, and we enjoyed it a lot. But though it went on for several blocks, it did not actually blow us away with its size or variety of produce. Very soon, it "degenerated" to blocks and blocks of dry goods. We dutifully walked these, mostly hoping for a resurgence of food vendors.

We had an eye open for a certain couple of items of beach wear, but the people right now must feel it cold, and we saw lots of down jackets and warm scarves.

We came to the end and walked back through it all, heading for the next market we had read about. With this walk we saw more elaborate buildings, statues, palm trees.

Not sure who these all are, but they fit in style wise with many of the surrounding buildings.

The next market was called the Noailles, or Marche des Capuchins. This is a more ethnic one, featuring North African stuff and naturally many more North African shoppers.

This market was much grittier than the other, and for that, more interesting.

Can't really get grittier than these sheep's heads!

Ah yes, Paella. We had hoped to see Bouillabaisse, but no luck.

This lady was making the Tunisian flat bread that I think we also saw at Arles.

Some unique bread shapes in the same bakery

Many colours of spices. We did not pay attention to what they actually all were.

This Turkish Delight really was delightful

We are quite the Halva fans back home. Our local store carries some from Israel. We see it in small chunks, never like this!

Dodie and the man discuss how big our slice ought to be.

This is typical dress for a customer in this store.

Below are just two of the dishes at the stall that interested us the most. The two fellows running it are also shown. Canada is no mystery to the second fellow, who served us. He has friends in Montreal.

We found a bench soon and set out our dishes. One the left was "lamb" and on the right chicken with balls of soft cheese. In the middle, potatoes and aubergines, and rice. It looked great, and we also expected it to be spicy. But surprisingly it was fairly bland, except that what we took to be lamb was mutton, and very strongly flavoured for that. We realized that in French, there is no distinction between lamb and mutton, that we know, anyway. At least we left the heads back on the counter!

The main feature of Marseille is the Old Harbour, and the main street of town, La Canebiere runs directly in to it. We had already been in town some time without going to the harbour, but we got onto Canebiere and went for it.

We are coming soon to two knock your socks off basilicas, but the harbour remains the standout feature of the city. There is of course the blue Med, and then the buildings surrounding the very U shaped harbour, together with the fishing and other boats. It's great.

The fish market deep in the harbour was still going when we got there. But we plan to return much earlier to see more action.

Just by the fish market was yet another market - one for Christmas. This was comprised of very many standard huts, each selling high quality local food products or crafts.

Nougat from Montsegur. Montsegur is east of Montelimar but in the same region.

These are really big hunks of nougat. The one I tried seemed too sweet.

A small Santa Claus train circling around with the kids.

In addition to the general Christmas market , there was a special one for Santons. Santons are little figures, some suitable for creche scenes. We saw them in Arles and at the time did not know they were a big thing. They are! We will visit the Santons market tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will also go to Cosquer, which is an elaborate reproduction of a prehistoric cave found underwater by a diver (Henri Cosquer). The building for this is out by the harbour entrance, and we walked there today to buy tickets for tomorrow.

This walk took us to the first unique basilica - Eglise St Lazare.

This is the Eglise St Lazare. It's not particularly ancient, having been built from 1833. That probably places it more as a Belle Epoque thing.

The church is strikingly beautiful, with the stripey marble patterns and the Provencal mosaics and designs.

We had learned about the Panier district of Marseille on Youtube, and were pleased to see it pop up on our map, not from from St Lazare. Panier is up a hill and many of the streets are in fact walkways with stairs in them. The streets are narrow and feature boutiques and quirky restaurants, plus some imaginative grafitti.

Stairs and narrow streets are a big part of the Panier district.

Panier looked like it would have been a cool groovy hippie hangout in days gone by. It was interesting to walk, though I can not say that we saw any clearly great restaurants, boutiques, bakeries, musicians, or other features. Soon Dodie found a shortcut down some steep steps, and we popped out back near the Old Harbour.

The other really well known landmark in the city is the Notre Dame de la Garde cathedral, on a hill overlooking the town. We tried to decide if we had enough energy to go up there today, and I declared that with a coffee and pastry it could be done. Dodie reminded me that a "coffee" was going to be a teeny thing of not much use, which I had to admit was true. However we passed a Starbucks, and I saw the chance to order one of "proper" size. That turned out to be right, and I also got a cinnamon bun. Cinnamon is just not a much used spice in France. In ordering this stuff, maybe I am gearing up to return to the Great White North.

The coffee and bun and a hot chocolate for Dodie provided the fuel to go find the #60 bus to take us up the hill. And it was up - way up. The bus, overloaded, careened along narrow streets of white buildings, and finally came to rest atop a huge hill, with a staggering panoramic 360 degree view of the city.

White buildings, brown roofs, mountains all around.

It was very windy, and high, not the conditions I find most comfortable. But it was stunning nonetheless. And that only applies to outside the church. Inside had to be one of the most elaborate designs we have come across. It made St. Lazare look rather tame, and would easily compete with other gorgeous churches, like the basilica at Lourdes or the Notre Dame de Fourviere at Lyons.

Notre Dame de la Garde was named after the hill it is built on, which was the "guard" of the city and included a fortress built by Francis I. Despite its origins in 1214 and integration with a fort, around 1524, the main stunning basilica was built from 1853-1870. It is Romanesque, with a strong Byzantine influence.

Below are some views of the outside of the church, together with an idea of what you can see looking down to the city and the sea. Sorry it's not an organized panorama.

The virgin at the top is copper plated with gold. The gold needs to be replaced every 25 years.

Here we see part of the original fort, and the fact that the whole thing is built on rock.

These steps are for those foolish enough to walk up!

The Provence Cross, a design we saw throughout Provence.

The ships are sailors' offerings, given for example after having been saved from a storm.

This is a mosaic from the floor. The mosaics of the church are inspired by 5th and 6th century mosaics from Rome and Ravenna.

The sort of modern origins of the basilica can be felt in it also having elevators, a restaurant, boutique, and toilets. In the boutique were many books about Provence and about the church. There was for some reason a lot of stuff about the Shroud of Turin too. The book Secret Provence that is in the centre of the photo below was interesting because it had "advanced" Provence topics. I only glanced at it quickly. There was stuff like the magic square at Oppede le Vieux. I really had no time to peruse the book, but wish I had.

Another book on offer, over my head but no doubt of interest to Joni, covered the quirks speech in Marseille. I have seen a similar book about Quebec French. On the random page I opened, I can easily admit that I have no idea what they are talking about!

We hopped the bus and returned to the Old Harbour. We found there three or four gatherings, which displayed the vitality of the city but covered vastly different topics. There were some acrobats, who had accumulated a large crowd, there was support for Ukraine, there were Gilets Jaunes congratulating themselves on still being in existence, and there was a demonstration about abused women, such as Mahsa Amini killed by morality police in Iran. Three women who appear on the back of many tee shirts in the demonstration are unknown to us.

Acrobats. They are under a shelter with a mirror ceiling.

We do not really get the meaning of this lady's sign...

Today's ride: 10 km (6 miles)
Total: 3,418 km (2,123 miles)

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Joni MillerGreat writing throughout. This entry was super enjoyable
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2 years ago

Suzanne GibsonI never imagined you two as being "city people", but you have had such marvelous days in Paris and now Marseilles, and done a great job showing them to us. Again I am amazed at your seemingly endless energy. Thank you!
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2 years ago

Rich FrasierMarseille often gets a bad rap, even (especially?) from French people. We visited a few years ago (not on bikes) and found it beautiful, charming, and invigorating.

Your journal entry does a great job of showing what we liked about the city, too. Thanks!
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2 years ago

Keith KleinHi,
Okay, I jumped the gun. The sentiments remain. Marseille was done up proud by your visit. And you didn’t visit the museums on this occasion, which are well worth it. We love the city, and can even understand the accent! And the views from N.D. de la Garde are great. The Île d’If is in the background, and always reminds me of the Count of Monte Christopher, who (fictionally) escaped from the prison there. The market is one of our favorites, too. For good bouillabaisse the restaurants around the Vieux Port claim to each serve the best. You might find differently, but it’s still good.
Awaiting the word for your departure,
Cheers,
Keith
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2 years ago