French Ventures: Marseille

In the months of February and March, my friend Hattie and I planned a couple of trips within France to stay with our friends who we'd met through the ENS. Our first trip was to visit Clémence in Marseille, where she was staying at home preparing for her exchange to Japan.

Marseille is located in the most south-east department in France, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. I had visited Provence with my host family when I was 14 and had seen Aix-en-Provence and Stes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Marseille is entirely different from any other city I had visited in France. The buildings were white and it felt very Mediterranean.

It was our first exposure to sunshine in ages and our moods were instantly boosted. It was also really nice to be in a family setting for the first time since I'd come to France. We played Just Dance with Clémence and her sister, Valentine.

We did tons of touring in the few days that we were there including Château d'If which is said to have inspired the writer, Alexandre Dumas the son, for his work, The Count of Monte Cristo. It was impressive. We took a ferry out to the island where this fortress is located. On the way out of the harbour, Clémence pointed out that the cannons were actually pointed in toward the harbour. The defence in the harbour was not to protect against attacks from the sea, it was to control the population of Marseille from revolting. Apparently, Marseille's population is dangerously political. The Château was used as a prison because it was essentially impossible to escape and also as a space for quarantine during outbreaks of disease. It was rumoured that the Iron Mask and the Marquis de Sade were imprisoned here, but this is not true. Now it is used only as a tourist attraction.

That afternoon, we went to the famous Four du navette, a boulangerie that makes traditional Marseillais bread things called navettes that taste like fleurs d'oranger (orange flowers). Clémence said you either love them or you hate them. I'm glad I tried it, but it was definitely not my cup of tea.

For dinner we had a leek quiche and some other delicious dishes, played more Just Dance, got to know Clémence's parents a bit and watched a popular children's film in France and Mulan in French (it was just not the same) before bed. It was the first time Hattie and I had ever really had a sleepover and we were hyper like adolescents so it was a while before we managed to fall asleep.

Throughout the weekend, we visited a bunch of the well-known  sights in Marseille including the Abbey of Saint Victor (one of the oldest places of Christian worship in Europe)
La Vieille Charité:

The Marseille Cathedral (Cathédrale Sainte-Marie-Majeure de Marseille):

Finally, we reached the top of the hill overlooking Marseille via the Petit Train, a tourist service that is ridiculously comical, especially if you speak both English and French. It started out in French where the descriptions were excessive and kitsch, but included interesting facts. When it switched to English, it sounded like a computer voice until it pronounced French words, for which the accent was flawless, but the amount of information given was at least half of what was said in French and most of the interesting facts were simply left out. Occasionally, it would also offer translations in Spanish and Italian.

Definitely worth the price of admission, and they even offered a special DVD to take home to your family!

Once at the top, we were met with the splendour of Notre-Dame de la Garde.  People from Marseilles traditionally see Notre-Dame de la Garde as the guardian and the protector of the city. Locals refer to it as la bonne mère ("the good mother"). The basilica was damaged by bullets during the liberation of France in World War II and has undergone extensive restorations. It is filled with pictures of boats presumably requesting protection while at sea and model boats hanging from fishing wire from the ceiling. The basilica is extremely impressive, but when you walk in it feels like a place that locals really go, like a local pub.

And the views were extraordinary:

That night we stayed in and relaxed. We had been trekking everywhere, so Hattie fell asleep on the couch, and I did some reading for homework (this is practically unheard of). We watched the film Ensemble, c'est tout with Audrey Tautou and Guillaume Canet. There was almost too much slang and too much whispering, but the acting was pretty good so it wasn't too difficult to figure out what was going on.

Our final day of touristing, we headed out to La Corniche, "a picturesque waterfront road between the Old Port and the Bay of Marseille" for crêpes on the beach.

That night for dinner, we had "alouette sans tête", a beef paupiette filled with chopped vegetables and minced meat, tied into a package and cooked in a tomato sauce with other vegetables. It's a traditional dish from Provence.

That night, we went out for drinks at the "Red Lion" pub along the Corniche with some of Clémence's friends for a birthday party and listened to a bit of the traditional Marseillais accent, but nothing this strong:

Unfortunately, I couldn't get that one with subtitles, and this one has mistranslated a bit, so it comes off more vulgar than it should be (you have been warned):

In conclusion, what an excellent trip to the south of France with great friends! I would love to go again in the summer, when we could have swum int he Mediterranean Sea.