Marseilles

The next day we were in Marseilles. Pulling in to port we had these amazing views of these white cliffs.

I had heard it was kind of a run-down fishing town, and it was ....but we really loved it. It was funky and the old part of the city was fantastic for its old architecture. I did not have any bouillabaisse, though this is where it comes from...but some of our fellow travelers did and they said the cafe actually showed them the fish they had purchased that the soup would be made out of. Judging by the fish below, that would not have enhanced my appetite!! Many of the cafes had these azure blue table cloths....Marseilles is in the south of France, in Provence, so we saw a lot the the typical "Provence" color scheme of the bright blues, yellows and reds.There was an old pirate looking ship in the port that you could pay money to go on board and see; needless to say, we did not. So, here is the deal, we had booked round trip train tickets to go to Avignon and Arles from Marseilles. They were offered as a tour, but they were insanely expensive and you only got to go to one city for the whole day, instead of going to both. We wanted to see Marseilles itself, but we were really looking forward to seeing the rural French countryside. The train rides were only about half an hour each and according to our schedule we were docking in the early morning and would have all day.

We had called ahead of time to double check the times we would be in port and booked our nonrefundable train tickets accordingly. I was actually very proud of myself, because I learned if you book them on the European website, you pay about 1/3 of the price of the USA site. So after wading through many French words that I had to use a dictionary to find out the meaning...I booked our round trip tickets to go to Avignon, then over to Arles and then back to Marseilles, and have a few hours left to see the city.

Well....the night prior we get our next day's schedule and we are docking 3 hours later than the schedule we were given! I was quite in an uproar and made my wonderful husband go give the people who gave us wrong times, a piece of my mind :)

In the end Colonial refunded our money, thank goodness, but we still did not get to go to Avignon and Arles and the Provence countryside.

Although I did end up enjoying Marseilles very much, so we will save Avignon for another day!


What did we see instead...first we went to the water district building, yes this is, and always has been, a building for the water district...
This is the back of the statues at the top, the robes were beautifully carvedWe also visited the cathedral that overlooked the city and the harbor. On the top of it is the most God-awful statue of Mary and Jesus I have ever seen. It is this ginormous gold thing with hollow eyes...it was so nasty. The cathedral was burning (I swear) thousands of candles and it felt like it was over 100 degrees inside (and I do know what 100 degrees feels like, mind you) so we didn't stay inside very long...but the views were great!
Ok, this is for you lovers of literature: this is the island with the prison (Chateau d'If) in the book The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas.
Now for the charming old city; it is much older than most other places we visited and it was a wonderful step back into time....you will all just have to suffer, as I took so many pictures, and there were so many that I just loved and had to post!! So here they are, including the great address numbers and short little doors. Yes, people do still live here!! How tall are they, I wonder...

Of course being in Marseilles I had to buy soap. This is the region that is famous for it, so we searched online to find this highly recommended shop. It was such a perfect little place. So one of the very few things I bought on this trip was this soap.
When we came back to the ship we noticed that the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman was right next to our ship. On the side of the ship it reads "Give 'em Hell"...I thought I got a photo of that, but I didn't....so this will have to do.
The last night on the ship we went out to a fun dinner with some other couples and then stayed up late dancing....as it was my last opportunity! The water was really rough that night, and so we finally had to go to bed, as the ship rocking was making us queasy. We both had weird dizzy-ship feelings for a few weeks after we got home!