17th Installment: Fear and Loathing in Marseille

The train to Marseille follows the sea, gliding past the sandy beaches located outside of Antibes and Cannes, then moves inland into the southernmost portion of Provence. There you’ll find lots of agriculture in the fertile valleys and vineyards on the hillsides, lush and green.

After a 2 hour trip to Marseille Saint-Charles station you are treated to an amazing site when you get outside. Crested on a hill it offers a panoramic view of the surrounding city and of the Basilica Notre-Dame de la Garde on the horizon perched on a distant hill and the highest point in view. Obviously we won’t be going there unless they’re offering free helicopter rides. (Sigh, not true)

Google Maps shows us that it’s a 27 minute walk to our next studio in the Castellane district and because we’re standing 50′ above the street (104 marble stairs), it’s safe to say that it’ll be all downhill from here, so we’ll forgo the bus and tram lines as recommended and do what we do best, walk, whistling all the way.

Of course just because the stairs go down doesn’t mean that our bags still don’t need to be carried by hand all the way to the street and they are bursting with extra food, the heaviest bottle of wine in the world, and all of the beer glasses and ashtrays that I could beg from servers along the way. Voila, we are at street level, but there is a problem (besides the deafening street noise at one of the city’s busiest intersections), the horizon is far above us. WHAT! Maybe that story dad told us of going to school uphill both ways had some merit, and he wasn’t nutso like Darlene insists (she’s such a Negative Nancy, her husband Don is also on the CSIS conspiracy theory list).

Yes, it was a tiring slog over hill and dale mostly on the busiest street in the city with e-scooters roaring past on the sidewalk and scooters parking willy-nilly around us. Heads down, one foot in front of the other, sweat dripping off our noses (why does this happen so often?)

After 45 minutes, just like Maps said, we reach our goal and message our host and her son Romeo comes down and lets us in the outside security door. A very sweet young man, he offers to carry Carol’s bag to our first floor room up the 31 stairs, which she obliges him. Its always been Europeans little joke on the rest of the world to not count the actual first floor which is for commercial space or in apartment blocks for laundry, storage, and mechanicals, and ceilings are typically 16-20 feet high. He also looks back at me with my swollen red face and bulging eyeballs and asks me the same question. ‘Monsieur,  I have two hands and can carry for you’? ‘No thank you’ I mumble in my pathetic male-ego voice, ‘I can manage just fine’, as my knee makes an involuntary left turn into the bannister. I can feel my nose growing á la Pinocchio.

Romeo knows a smattering of English, but we know just a dash of French, so with verbal cues and hand signals we figure out the stove, coffee machine,  toilet, and a/c. He finishes with ‘Is there anything else?’ as he has hand on the doorknob, ‘Non monsieur’ I reply and then quickly we badger him 3 more times for obscure info. ‘Ou est la boulangerie!  Ou est le plus proche tram? And anxious not to lose our local guide … ‘where is the plane to Milwaukee?’ in garbled frenchish. He was smiling and nervously laughing the whole time and after we finally closed the door on him we turned and high-fived each other. ‘Woohoo we are les frenchies’!

The place is large for a studio. It has an odd-shaped shower, toilet that works mostly (except when we were leaving), comfortable faux leather couches that had the edges trimmed by a family of large cats, or maybe a jaguar, and ladder/stairs that led to the mezzanine bedroom with 4’11” headroom. This was $144 a night vs. $300 for a hotel, what would you choose? Oh, and 16′ ceilings.

Now about the view. Whipping the drapes back on the two large windows exposed the building across the street. An EU flag flanked by two effing American flags looking right back at me! WTH!! And a little sign saying ‘American Center for Language Studies’. If I’ve ever seen a CIA black ops site than this was it! I could spot the infrared cameras pointed directly at our room and quickly hid behind the two foot thick walls that all of these Haussman buildings were made of. I looked around our apartment and could see potential cameras and listening devices everywhere. ‘Hey! I haven’t called him an a-hole THAT many times’! I called to Carol who naively was unloading our luggage. ‘Carol, CAROL! If you see a swat team pull up out front I’m flushing all of our Tylenol and ibuprofen down the shitter (if it flushes)!’

I’m starting to think sweet Sylvie (who we just happened to meet standing outside our apartment door) could be an agent and Romeo was here to hide listening devices.  He almost had me fooled.

We have only two days here and we’re going to make the most of it and hit all the high points (literally). Maps tells us that we were only 950 meters (straight up) from Basilica Notre-Dame so we have to go, don’t we?

Carol balks at the idea of starting our day by climbing so many stairs in the searing heat. ‘Okay princess, should I get you a tissue? Here, I’ll adjust your knee brace and we’ll be ready to go’.

Well, it’s all downhill from here, to the old port that is, which was our next destination. Carol was in much better spirits on the way down and we wound through several neighborhoods that each had their own ethnic flavor. Every skin tone and shade (except Indian,and Sikh, which became more and more obvious as the days compounded), colorful robes and head gear, shimmering materials and bold patterns, and mores of each ethnicity was on display. Of course walking down the stairs moved the pain from calf to shin and the front of the foot in the sandals sliding forward versus the pounding the bottom of the feet took on the upward slopes. We’ll we have Paris to look forward to in a few days and it’s relatively horizontal terrain would bring us respite.

Carol rooted out another great spot and we had a tasty lunch along the harbor with entertaining restaurant-goers all around us including a US (black ops) couple who were going to the Springsteen concert on Saturday. They were from New Jersey and had seen him 32 times already! Great fun. Then we wound our way to the Le Panier district which is the oldest district in the oldest city in France and can claim authenticated roots to 600 B.C.. It’s known for its architecture, historical landmarks, and quaint shops, but primarily for it’s professional graffiti adorning many walls and businesses. From pop art to politically-charged messaging it was in every plaza and was quirky and thought provoking. But alas, we had been here several years ago as a day trip out of Avignon and today we were too hot and exhausted to appreciate it, so we pulled the plug early.

We decided to make our way back up to our neighborhood and explore closer to home where we might be able to rest for a bit. Our path took us through the North African districts featuring Tunisian and Moroccan products and foods and wound ever more higher on the hill and eventually ended up in the Cours Julien neighborhood. Wow!

Le Cours Julien is the bohemian center of Marseille with tacky graffiti splashed everywhere mixed in again with professional murals on every surface. Vibrant and lively don’t do this district justice. We had never seen so much flavor and activity in such a compact community before. The main area, which was about 6 blocks in length, lined with the ubiquitous aging six storey apartment buildings, had a narrow roadway/walkway packed with shops, restaurants, and bars of every persuasion on each side. With a 30 meter section in between that housed seating for hundreds (a thousand?) for the 60 (80?) restaurants and bars, most just 5 meters wide. With minimal seating inside, but geared for outdoor drinking and dining, each establishment was recognizable by their distinct seating and umbrellas. And every place had music playing loudly, which it had to be because of the din of conversation and laughter and plates and chairs moving on the brick and flagstone grounds. There was no overlap as the music only projected 5 – 10 meters from their source directly forward. But as you walked past you were taken through jazz, deep house and electronic beats, along with hippies, crooners and ingénues, balladeers and metal heads, blues, and folk; no genre was left untouched. And the apparel and accents of each group was broadly represented; a true feast for the eyes and ears. It was massively invigorating.

We made a complete circuit trying to take it all in and narrow down our possibilities and we finally settled on a somewhat traditional (as traditional as it could be allowing the venue) eatery where the plat du jour featured a fish of the day with grilled vegetables and prepared in a very French way, with breads and of course a carafe of local wine.

By good fortune we secured the best seating spot for music, activity, and of course people watching. There’s no eat and run in these situations.  You luxuriate in each bite and sip, and because of the absence of tipping there is no hovering waiter to pester you with service that is not required and no anxiety that you must leave and be replaced by a new cash cow.

Prices with the tax built in and tipping only in the rarest of circumstances takes the stress out of mentally tabulating your final cost and having it as a drain on the experience at hand. Anything else seems shameful and inappropriate. I wish it was like this back home.

The next night we pretty well replicated the first day (minus most of the stairs) and once again ended up in Cours Julien with the same result. Only this time we left by a different corridor and saw how utterly huge this experience was! On attached streets there were easily the same amount of eateries and quirky bars sprawled onto the sidewalks, boulevards and roadways.

Despite this being a 4 day weekend for the French (Ascension day) it was apparent that this was an everyday occurrence and to live in these neighborhoods you would be free of the television or politics or greed that occupy so much of our time back home; and you would operate with a more ethereal mindset and be closer to peace of mind.

Needless to say, we enjoyed our abbreviated stay in Marseille and despite the awkward neighbors situation (U-S-A, U-S-A) it was a highlight of many highlights of the trip so far.

Tomorrow brings traditional Dijon just a stone’s throw away from Paris, the final portion of our adventure.