Path: Eric’s Site / Eric / Travel / Europe 2022 / Marseille

Related: Europe 2022, Madrid, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Marseille, Zürich (Site Map)

Spain Plus Two Cities in 2022, Marseille

Parts

Monday, October 10

My train arrived in Marseille around 21:30, so all I did was go to my hotel and unpack. Happily, this was another hotel near the train station, just across the street.

Tuesday, October 11

Vieux Port.

I got something of an early start, went to the metro station below the train station, bought a 72-hour pass, and rode the subway to Vieux Port, took a few photos, got oriented, asked the tourist office about options, and set off to walk through the oldest district of Marseille, Le Panier. There I tried to figure out what was on exhibit and where at Le Vieille Charité, a former almshouse now used for museums and other educational and cultural activities. The courtyard is surrounded by multiple buildings with multiple interior spaces on multiple floors, and it took me a while to find their Museum of Art of Africa, Oceania, and Amerindia and make my way around.

Scene in Marseille.

L’Espérantine de Marseille.

After that, chocolate stores were open, so I went to L’Espérantine de Marseille, still in Le Panier. Their “thing” is chocolate with infused olive oil. I tried that and their solid chocolates. Some of the latter, I discarded uneaten, so that is a no. If you want to try the olive oil with chocolate, Chocolate Therapy in Framingham, Massachusetts, has a nicer olive-oil piece.

Then I walked around getting acquainted with the area around Vieux Port and also visited about six more chocolate stores or places were there had been chocolate stores. Even though some were gone, Marseille had plenty of chocolate stores—too many for me to sample. I did buy some at Le Temps d’un Chocolat, pictured below.

Cathédrale Sainte-Marie-Majeure de Marseille.

Scene in Marseille.

Le Temps d’un Chocolat.

Next I visited Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde, another church on a hill. Take a look at the last photograph of the set below. The signs say the wall bears the marks of the battle of the liberation of Marseille, August 15-25, 1944.

Near Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde.

Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde.

Marseille from Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde.

Marseille from Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde. What are the terraced slopes in the background?

Wall of Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde.

Marseille history.

After checking out a few chocolate stores in the area, I took a bus to Musée d’Art Contemporain. Unfortunately, it was closed for renovation. I caught the bus back, and it took a detour due to construction or something, and I did not know where it was going. Without technology, that could be a problem, having to figure out where you are unexpectedly. Fortunately, my iPad helped me keep track, and I signaled for a stop near a metro station and changed to the train. It is harder for them to detour that.

Does anybody rate metro systems for loudness, smoothness, and speed? Marseille’s trains seemed fast but were pretty loud.

Back at Vieux Port, I found a croissant. The Spanish hotels had croissants at breakfast, but they were somewhat bread in a croissant shape, and I hoped for something buttery and flaky. A croissant at L’Atelier des Pains was nice but not great. Maybe I will find a recipe and try it on my own.

Wandering around some more, I found the Ancient Port, a few hundred meters inland from the Vieux Port (Old Port). The grass in the photos at the right is where the water used to be. They found the Ancient Port while excavating for a new mall. I will get back to this in Wednesday’s notes, when I visited the museum inside.

Wednesday, October 12

I started the day at Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MUCEM), which Lonely Planet called fantastic and stunning. I found it disjointed, shallow at points, and promoting viewpoints about the Mediterranean diet and power and trade in the Mediterranean. Not that its viewpoints were necessarily misguided or wrong, but some of the claims made lacked explanation or support. The exhibits leaned away from museum presentation of facts toward advocacy.

The museum is connected by a footbridge to Fort Saint-Jean, where there is a much more modest but more interesting presentation about the history of the fort, covering its two-thousand years of existence and use by different people at different times.

Fort Saint-Jean.

MUCEM.

View from Fort Saint-Jean.

I made a sweep of the Musée Regards de Provence, a private art museum with a memorial to the Station Sanitaire that used to be in its place, and headed to Musée d’Histoire de Marseille at the Ancient Port. Below are more pictures of the port, which dates from the first century CE. It was filled in after the sixth century CE. They can tell from traces of barnacles and marine corrosion that the sea level was 50 cm lower than the current level.

The adjacent museum has ships that were found buried at the port. The walkway leading to the stairs in the photos below used to be the entrance to the city from the port. The different types of stones and layouts in it were put in in different eras.

Ancient Port.

Ancient Port, different pavings from different eras.

The tourist-trap restaurants around Vieux Port were largely unappealing to me, so I settled for a salad place. Then I visited Musée Cantini, which had an exhibit of the works of Maria Helena Viera da Silva, an abstract artist. With a few of her works, the museum displayed quotes from her about the work. With others, the museum had its own text. The artist’s quotes made sense about what the accompanying painting was portraying, whereas the museum text generally rambled into nonsense.

Les Fèves Toquées.

Hubert.

Leaving the museum, I resumed my chocolate hunt, finding three more closed stores and one that had changed its name. That one, Comptoir Marlau or Les Fèves Toqées, is a specialty food store with chocolates. They retail several brands of different qualities, not all labeled in the case, so you have to know what is what to select the good stuff. After that was Maison Hubert, which presents as a family business but has some pieces that look suspiciously like Michel Cluizel products.

Then I visited Cours Julien the center of “Marseille’s most vibrant bohemian quarter” according to Lonely Planet.

Street art near Cours Julien.

Cours Julien.

View from Cours Julien.

Cours Julien.

Proceeding to Palais Longchamp, I visited Musée des Beaux Arts in its east wing. One of the first things I saw there was an 1843 painting that looked pretty good for its time and age, Vue prise sur le chemin de la Maladetta (View taken on the path to the Maladetta) by Jean-Baptiste Dalige. It has some good color and sparkle. I could not get a good photo, but you can see a low-resolution image here.

I also noticed Le Choléra à bord de la Melpomène by Horace Vernet because it was one of the few paintings not of some wealthy or powerful people or a religious story. The sign with it provides another example of machine translation.

That wrapped up my day.

Palais Longchamp.

Le Choléra à bord de la Melpomène at Musée des Beaux Arts.

Sign for Le Choléra à bord de la Melpomène.

Translated sign.

Palais Longchamp.

Thursday, October 13

Thursday I had finished my primary Marseille checklist, so I did secondary and tertiary things. While waiting for stores to open, I noticed several people arriving on scooters, which seemed to be in common, but not heavy, use in Marseille. I did some quick window shopping at Les Docks Village and then headed to the mall across the street, where I got you a photo of an Apple Store with a boat behind it and a Reservoir advertising their crashed computer.

View at Rue des Docks.

Scooters and bicycles.

Apple Store in Marseille.

Crashed display.

Wandering around, I happened across Labstyle, a “concept store” with home decor and whatnot but also a sign out front advertising Michel Cluizel chocolates. Then I headed for Palais du Pharo, which Napolean had built for Empress Eugenie.

View in Marseille.

Palais du Pharo.

View from Jardin du Pharo.

Vallon des Auffes.

Then I went to Vallon des Auffes, a “traditional fishing haven” with an overpriced pizza restaurant. I headed back toward the center of town to check out a café I had seen from the bus the day before that seemed popular. But its menu was unimpressive. It may just have been a business lunch crowd looking for convenience and burgers.

Back at the Vieux Port area, I searched high and low for a tuna crêpe. They are easy to find in Paris, but not so here. After checking several crêperies and walking a fair distance, I settled on Poké at Pokawa. it was fairly nice, but still not quite as good as I have had in the US.

After leaving Pokawa, I passed a little place with a tuna crêpe on its menu.

Pokawa poké.

Friday, October 14

Friday was a long train day (seven hours) that had been giving me anxiety since buying tickets. When planning this trip, I found a train route from Marseille to Zürich with a 34-minute transfer in Dijon. When I went to book it, the computer changed it to a route with the same start and end times but an eleven-minute transfer in Mulhouse. I tried the French train company, the Swiss train company, and a third-party web site, and they all made that substitution, even if I set the option to have transfers of at least 30 minutes. So I booked the ticket and figured I would try to change it in Europe.

At home, I used Google Maps to investigate the Mulhouse train station, inside and out. It was a simple layout, eight parallel tracks connected by an overhead bridge, and Google Maps had interior views that showed where the departure displays were. So I was prepared to make a quick transfer.

In Spain, the folks at a Renfe counter said they could not change the Swiss ticket. When I finally got to Marseille, the advance-purchase discounts were no longer available, and the price change would be prohibitive. (European train tickets are often much cheaper when booked in advance.)

So, I kept the original ticket and kept a close watch on the progress of both trains. Shortly after leaving Marseille, my train was five minutes late. After a few stops, it seemed to make up for it, but then it became five minutes late again. The Lyon stop was scheduled for ten minutes, so I hoped they could just shorten that to five and depart at the scheduled time, but no.

That continued until we were approaching Mulhouse. The Swiss train company app said my second train was on time, so I was expecting to have six minutes for the transfer. Then I noticed the app was showing me a train number different from that of my ticket. Checking more carefully, it showed two trains with different numbers both scheduled to go from Mulhouse to Zürich with the same departure and arrival times. As it turned out, they were trains that started separately and joined at some point. But the app showed one was ten minutes late and the other was on time.

Eventually, my train arrived at Mulhouse four minutes late. I hustled along the platform, up the stairs, and looked for my next train. The displays were there, but each showed information only for the track it was by. So I had to walk to one end of the bridge and then back, and then I made it to my platform on time.

The two connected trains arrived at the station at the same time, in spite of the app. So, I made my connection, and then there was some holdup approaching Zürich, so the train arrived 30 minutes late.

⇐ Back to Barcelona — On to Zürich ⇒

Path: Eric’s Site / Eric / Travel / Europe 2022 / Marseille

Related: Europe 2022, Madrid, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Marseille, Zürich (Site Map)