Visit to Marseille
We go to the market and walk around the Old Port
Getting there
We woke up early for our trip to Marseille today. It was easy to get there—you take Line 50 at the bus station and it’s 5,70 euros each way, although we think there’s a discount if you tell the bus driver you’re returning. We’ll have to do a little more research. The buses run every 10 minutes or so and there’s several. The buses go to Marseille Saint-Charles station where you can catch the Métro anywhere you need to go. We wanted to go to the Vieux Porte (old port) so we took Line 1 down two stops. By the way, we tested our Chip+PIN cards and they worked like a charm at the ticket kiosks—I’ve been using my Diner’s Club MasterCard without any issues anywhere. Gaston has a Chase Marriott Visa chip and signature card and he was also able to use the kiosk but it did not require a PIN.
Markets
When we exited out of the metro stop, we were greeted by the smell of fish.
I don’t like seafood. Well, I actually like salmon but neither Céleste nor I prefer seafood. It’s a shame because living around here would be a seafoodie’s delight—you can buy fresh fish in Aix or Marseille.
We retraced our steps from our last stay in Marseille and found a restaurant we had eaten at that we remembered had great sandwiches but it had been replaced with another shop. Oh well!
After that we headed to the Arab market on La Canebière and Rue des Capucins. It was great and had a ton of shops and stalls with food and items. It was pretty overwhelming I think—there’s just so much to see and smell. What caught our eye was Saladin’s.
Holy moly! I was in spice heaven. Any spice you’d ever need sat under the roof in huge sacks. As you can see, it was well-priced too. They only accepted cash and you had to buy in the gram increments noted on the cards (so 100g etc). I bought four 100g pouches of various spices. I look forward to cooking with them soon!
Lunch
After going to the market we were hungry. I looked up a good place to eat on Foursquare (which is pretty good for places around here). We found a place called Bobolivo. I got skewered chicken, Céleste got ravioli and Gaston got a bacon cheeseburger. Mine was great and the fries were great. Both Céleste’s and Gaston’s meals were a bit too saucy—Gaston said it would have been better without the melted cheese and Céleste said her pasta was too heavy due to the cream. It didn’t really look like ravioli to me. Overall it was good but maybe we’d choose different meals next time—I really liked my grilled chicken.
The fort
After lunch we wanted to walk to the fort because last time we were in Marseille we didn’t get a chance to visit. The Old Port was under construction during 2012 and 2013, so we missed quite a few sites. Now, the fort had great views, here are some photos.
The gardens on the roof were pretty cool and we sat and enjoyed the views for awhile. We walked along the ramparts and then made our way back to the old port and up the other side towards Parc la Pharo. It was a very cool palace and the park was a big open area.
The palace looks sweet, doesn’t it? It’s actually a conference center now! The view from the park wasn’t bad either although it really highlighted the pollution (smog) on the skyline—noticeably.
It’s a shame. It’s probably not as bad as other places but it just is a crime that there’s such pollution. Even when we were walking on the port, if you look down you’ll see people’s garbage floating in the water. We’ve also seen garbage in the fountains in Aix and it is just sad—why would you do that? France has a surprisingly large amount of trash receptacles all over the place. Luckily those are filled pretty full as well so I hope people respect their surroundings—I guess when you live here it’s not that special, just like you see trash alongside highways in the US.
One of my favorite things about France is how old everything is. We don’t have a picture of it but there’s a modern skyscraper, a single building, right in the middle of the new port area of Marseille and it just looks terrible—a sore thumb that mars the cityscape. Same with the exposition attached to the fort. It’s a big black enclosure with weird floral designs on the outside and it looks out of place next to the beautiful old fort and city. I don’t know who designed it but it was a bad idea.
Doesn’t it just look terrible? Ew.
Marseille is a cool city. Now I know where to go when I need more spices, the spice I bought should last awhile. The park was our last visit and after that we headed home on the bus.
