The French Connection. Popeye Doyle. Biros as weapons (well, they are a French invention!) Crazy car chases. My childhood recollections of Marseille are entirely based on the book (more than the film) and the gritty images portrayed have stuck.
It's hard to explain how 40+ years later these are somehow proven and disproved on the same day in town. Firstly, the bad bits - grimy buildings, smelly streets (so much so we saw disinfectant vans hosing down in several areas,) drug dealers, litter everywhere. Oh and the graffiti - in some parts it was so bad the buildings no-longer had colour - every square inch was affected.
On the flip side when we found the specific areas of tourist attraction they delivered magnificently, although getting between these subjected one to all the above horrors once again. Take something as trivial the railway station, built in the 1840s. It took them 60+ years to add the steps up to it, but when they got round to it, what a splendid job they did: over 15m wide made entirely in marble with beautiful embellishments. Another remarkable building, when we eventually reached it, is the Beau Artes and Natural History, two mirrored wings of a Versailles-like building which we didn't feel we had time to explore, although the façade was exciting enough.
Not mentioning several delightful churches and an Arc de Triumph on route is not because they weren't also lovely. We headed back into town along the principle axis before swerving South-wards to pick up our route towards the municipal area, passing as we did an horrendous street market which was just like a scrum free-for-all, before finding the Prefecture, the Palais de Justice and then climbing steeply up to the Notre Dame de la Garde, perched high on its hill overlooking the entire city, and with views well worth the exhaustion.
Finally we headed back down, towards the harbour, again passing some seedy areas as we walked, but discovering the theatre, opera house, town hall and a few other noteworthies as we went. The re-claimed port area now contains some splendid looking huge museums, but again we didn't really have the time and/or inclination to take a look, before walking back on to the Sojourn.
Of course there is always time to sit in the jacuzzi and have a cocktail or two, as we sailed out of the harbour and away from Marseille, a lovely experience with great views back towards the city, chatting with cronies Liz and Dick.
Dinner was in Restaurant Two which as usual was excellent, and we were additionally entertained by some of our newer cronies Darah and Jimmy on an adjacent table.
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