Marseilles

Our appointment at the consulate was at 9.45 a.m., so we had to get up and creep out of the gite very early. The drive was fine until we got to the city, when it was rush hour and the traffic was dreadfully slow. We almost abandoned our plan of parking near the Vieux Port, but thought better of it, and did get into a underground car park with half an hour to go to the appointment. 

Vieux Port

We thought that using the metro for the first time under time stress was not a brilliant idea, so took a taxi and arrived just in time to swig a coffee before the appointment. The interview was very brief (we look thoroughly honest, I hope, and certainly British) and were given a flimsy, white passport each. So we are no longer sans papier, thank goodness. It only lasts until the day of our tunnel booking, so we have to apply for new passports, and of course I still have no bag, no purse, no cash, no credit cards, no Nottingham City card, no driving licence, and no phone, so there’s still a lot of hassle to be gone through.

The metro is very easy to work, and we returned to the Vieux Port only to find that there were no boats to Chateau D’If. The sea was allegedly too rough. All I can say is it looked OK to us, and I’m sure that in those conditions, no Northumberland sailor would have even considered cancelling a trip to the Farne Islands.  It’s only in the harbour, for goodness sake.  I’m almost more fed up about that than about having the passports nicked.

The Hotel de Ville. King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated in front
of the building, in 1934

Anyway, we toured the old town. Marseilles was the European city of culture last year and there are some impressive looking new buildings which are museums and gallery spaces. But we chose to go round the older museum of the history of Marseilles, and it was very interesting. A number of ancient boats have been found, including Roman era dredgers, with winches to haul up buckets of mud through a hatch right through the middle of the deck.

The remains of the Greek dock

We also enjoyed Fort St Jean – so called because it was manned by the Order of St John of Jerusalem – and the poor house, which was vast.

The counterpart fort to Fort St Jean. There was a chain between them.

The Poorhouse (Vielle Charite)

Chapel of Vielle Charite

There were a lot of deportations and destruction during the war, and a number of monuments to those who died.

One thing we noticed is that the population is very mixed and seems, to the outsider, to be well integrated. We saw white grandparents with clearly mixed race grandchildren, and I’ve only ever seen that in Britain before now. It’s something that gives you hope for us all. 

I think we’d like to go back, as the coast is pretty dramatic, and we liked the atmosphere. I know Marseilles has a reputation, and the gendarmes to whom we reported the theft unanimously warned us to be careful there, but it’s not nearly as threatening as Naples or Barcelona.