Marseille - a photo essay
Oct 24th, 2019, 09:45 AM
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Marseille - a photo essay
I visited Marseille earlier this month and thought I would post a briefer trip report than I usually write, but with some photos. My usual travel companion unfortunately had a hospital appointment that meant this ended up being a solo trip, but I had a really nice time nonetheless. Here goes then - Part 1!
In the summer months you can get a direct train from London, St Pancras to Marseille without having to change anywhere and it's about 6 hours door to door. As I was going in autumn I had to change in Paris, but it wasn't a huge imposition. I had Standard Premier tickets which meant free breakfast and free wifi on Eurostar, and then an upstairs seat in one of the double decker SNCF trains from Gare de Lyon. The last leg of the journey goes through some attractive Provencal countryside, with little hilltop villages, castles and chateaux dotted everywhere, and wide, shallow gravelly rivers rushing past. The landscape is mountainous in parts. (Btw, the white limestone caps of the mountains look like snow from a distance - it's just erosion though)..
Once in Marseille, it was one stop on the metro from St Charles to Noailles, the closest stop to my hotel. I really loved my hotel (Mercure Vieux Port Canebiere), which had been renovated that year and only re-opened about a month before I travelled out. Typical French architecture - tall windows and intricate iron balconies. The interior was really nicely done too - dark walls, slightly oriental script used for room numbers and signage, silvery-grey carpets and rugs, deco-style bathrooms with monsoon showers and Nuxe toiletries, posh tea tray (Earl Grey and Mint varieties in cotton tea-bags), flatscreen tv, and even a little dining area with marble topped table and orange velvet pouffes!. Communal areas had mustard velvet upholstery. Staff were absolutely lovely. They were so good, I am in fact wondering if it was some sort of specialist launch team...
The surrounding streets were full of north African and middle eastern cafes, which turned out to be really great for a cheap breakfast - lots of pastries and artisan breads on offer. I managed to snag a very late lunch at a more traditionally French cafe (rotesserie chicken and salad), then wandered down to the harbour (which was only 5 mins from my hotel). Here, I made note of all the seafood restaurants lining the waterfront, and the pier where you could pick up boats to the calanques. Up on a high hill overlooking the harbour you could see the Notre Dame Basilica, and at the entrance to the harbour were two rose pink forts dating back about 400 years. One street back from the harbour on the north side of the water I found a very good glacier who offered unusual flavours such as basil, cardamom etc, though I eventually plumped for their signature vanille noire - made from whole crushed vanilla pods (not just the seeds) and sea-salt. It's jet-black, a bit scary looking, but very delicious. Church bells clanged to mark quarter and half hours, as I enjoyed the late evening sunshine. As dusk fell, I watched waiters darting out from the restaurants that were grouped around a tiny square opposite the ice cream parlour, moving vases of flowers to light dozens of tea lights.
Once back at the hotel, I tested the bar out, strictly for research purposes you understand, chatting to the female bartender over a couple of Negronis.
In the summer months you can get a direct train from London, St Pancras to Marseille without having to change anywhere and it's about 6 hours door to door. As I was going in autumn I had to change in Paris, but it wasn't a huge imposition. I had Standard Premier tickets which meant free breakfast and free wifi on Eurostar, and then an upstairs seat in one of the double decker SNCF trains from Gare de Lyon. The last leg of the journey goes through some attractive Provencal countryside, with little hilltop villages, castles and chateaux dotted everywhere, and wide, shallow gravelly rivers rushing past. The landscape is mountainous in parts. (Btw, the white limestone caps of the mountains look like snow from a distance - it's just erosion though)..
Once in Marseille, it was one stop on the metro from St Charles to Noailles, the closest stop to my hotel. I really loved my hotel (Mercure Vieux Port Canebiere), which had been renovated that year and only re-opened about a month before I travelled out. Typical French architecture - tall windows and intricate iron balconies. The interior was really nicely done too - dark walls, slightly oriental script used for room numbers and signage, silvery-grey carpets and rugs, deco-style bathrooms with monsoon showers and Nuxe toiletries, posh tea tray (Earl Grey and Mint varieties in cotton tea-bags), flatscreen tv, and even a little dining area with marble topped table and orange velvet pouffes!. Communal areas had mustard velvet upholstery. Staff were absolutely lovely. They were so good, I am in fact wondering if it was some sort of specialist launch team...
The surrounding streets were full of north African and middle eastern cafes, which turned out to be really great for a cheap breakfast - lots of pastries and artisan breads on offer. I managed to snag a very late lunch at a more traditionally French cafe (rotesserie chicken and salad), then wandered down to the harbour (which was only 5 mins from my hotel). Here, I made note of all the seafood restaurants lining the waterfront, and the pier where you could pick up boats to the calanques. Up on a high hill overlooking the harbour you could see the Notre Dame Basilica, and at the entrance to the harbour were two rose pink forts dating back about 400 years. One street back from the harbour on the north side of the water I found a very good glacier who offered unusual flavours such as basil, cardamom etc, though I eventually plumped for their signature vanille noire - made from whole crushed vanilla pods (not just the seeds) and sea-salt. It's jet-black, a bit scary looking, but very delicious. Church bells clanged to mark quarter and half hours, as I enjoyed the late evening sunshine. As dusk fell, I watched waiters darting out from the restaurants that were grouped around a tiny square opposite the ice cream parlour, moving vases of flowers to light dozens of tea lights.
Once back at the hotel, I tested the bar out, strictly for research purposes you understand, chatting to the female bartender over a couple of Negronis.
Last edited by RM67; Oct 24th, 2019 at 09:53 AM.
Oct 24th, 2019, 12:52 PM
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I suppose I might as well offer up my own photo report from three years ago; Marseille kaleidoscope | Any Port in a Storm
Oct 24th, 2019, 01:15 PM
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I suppose I might as well offer up my own photo report from three years ago; Marseille kaleidoscope | Any Port in a Storm
Oct 25th, 2019, 07:12 AM
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Part 2
I started the day with breakfast in an Algerian cafe - navettes and cafe au lait. Navettes are a local speciality - boat-shaped pastries made with orange blossom water. They come in a variety of sizes (little ones sold in jars or bags like sweets, and larger ones roughly the size of a croissant, sold individually). You dip the navettes into your coffee to soften them slightly. A man came in to the cafe as I sat at my little table and started jabbering crossly in French. I speak enough to know he was asking where the proprietress was and had I been served already, but before I could answer the shop assistant yelled equally crossly from the rear of the shop that she was making a coffee for me and he'd have to be patient. Ha! She was warming the milk for me and it was nice of her to do that, but I actually would have preferred her to serve it cold as I don't like the skin you get on warm milk.
After breakfast I made for Le Panier, the aim being to complete a self-guided street art tour. I had my free map from the hotel, and my camera, and a bottle of Schweppes Virgin Mojito and no firm plan other than to wander, but it all worked out very nicely. I loved Le Panier with it's narrow cobbled streets - some just wide enough for a single car and then only when pedestrians stood out of the way on doorsteps - little squares with fountains, and rows of artisan shops. There were a number of art galleries, a jewellers, several print-makers (one guy used recycled corregated card to print the Marseille skyline, another did t-shirts with sardines on). There were also several stores specialising in oils (olive, almond etc) and soaps. The soaps came in a variety of 'flavours' - all the usual scents like rose and lavender, but also special bars for exfoliation or for dealing with ezxma. I saw a fabulous mosaic made from pieces of broken glass in one shop window - it was a rendition of the artist Basquiat, and I liked it enough to photograph the shop front so that I could order it from the UK if I managed to scrape enough money together at any point! Old men sat on benches smoking hookah pipes and young women walked microscopically tiny dogs with pink collars or coats on. I passed a shop selling nothing but pastis and you got the scent of liquorice from some distance away. At every turn there was another interesting piece of art. Common themes were the sea (so lots of sea monsters, octopus and cubist looking fish), and North African heritage. Down one street I even caught an artist in the act, spray can in hand and swivel chair to sit on between painting stints!. In all I did nearly 25,000 steps and loved every single one of them. Btw, during the second world war, the Germans thought Le Panier a likely hiding place for the French Resistance, due to the proliferation of alleys and twisting streets, so tried to dynamite the whole area. Luckily they only succeeded in destroying the street fronting the harbour and virtually everything else has survived.
I started the day with breakfast in an Algerian cafe - navettes and cafe au lait. Navettes are a local speciality - boat-shaped pastries made with orange blossom water. They come in a variety of sizes (little ones sold in jars or bags like sweets, and larger ones roughly the size of a croissant, sold individually). You dip the navettes into your coffee to soften them slightly. A man came in to the cafe as I sat at my little table and started jabbering crossly in French. I speak enough to know he was asking where the proprietress was and had I been served already, but before I could answer the shop assistant yelled equally crossly from the rear of the shop that she was making a coffee for me and he'd have to be patient. Ha! She was warming the milk for me and it was nice of her to do that, but I actually would have preferred her to serve it cold as I don't like the skin you get on warm milk.
After breakfast I made for Le Panier, the aim being to complete a self-guided street art tour. I had my free map from the hotel, and my camera, and a bottle of Schweppes Virgin Mojito and no firm plan other than to wander, but it all worked out very nicely. I loved Le Panier with it's narrow cobbled streets - some just wide enough for a single car and then only when pedestrians stood out of the way on doorsteps - little squares with fountains, and rows of artisan shops. There were a number of art galleries, a jewellers, several print-makers (one guy used recycled corregated card to print the Marseille skyline, another did t-shirts with sardines on). There were also several stores specialising in oils (olive, almond etc) and soaps. The soaps came in a variety of 'flavours' - all the usual scents like rose and lavender, but also special bars for exfoliation or for dealing with ezxma. I saw a fabulous mosaic made from pieces of broken glass in one shop window - it was a rendition of the artist Basquiat, and I liked it enough to photograph the shop front so that I could order it from the UK if I managed to scrape enough money together at any point! Old men sat on benches smoking hookah pipes and young women walked microscopically tiny dogs with pink collars or coats on. I passed a shop selling nothing but pastis and you got the scent of liquorice from some distance away. At every turn there was another interesting piece of art. Common themes were the sea (so lots of sea monsters, octopus and cubist looking fish), and North African heritage. Down one street I even caught an artist in the act, spray can in hand and swivel chair to sit on between painting stints!. In all I did nearly 25,000 steps and loved every single one of them. Btw, during the second world war, the Germans thought Le Panier a likely hiding place for the French Resistance, due to the proliferation of alleys and twisting streets, so tried to dynamite the whole area. Luckily they only succeeded in destroying the street fronting the harbour and virtually everything else has survived.
Last edited by RM67; Oct 25th, 2019 at 07:25 AM.
