Day 71 Marseilles

We had intended to go on the hop-on / hop-off tourist bus, but by the time we had visited the tourist office to check other options, the top deck of the 10 am sailing was already full. My priority was to see the church on the hill, so we set off on foot - it didn't look that far away or that high. The walk up was steady uphill but not so steep as to require frequent stops. The view at the top is certainly worth the effort - you see the whole city and the surrounding mountains, as well as the offshore islands including the notorious Chateau D'If, which didn't look all that foreboding on a bright sunny day. It's quite close to shore - somewhere between Pinchgut in Sydney and Alcatraz in San Francisco.

The church, Notre Dame de Gard, dates from the latter half of the 19th century and uses two tones of stone in the structure, probably fashionable at the time. The interior was something else again - probably the most-decorated church we have seen. Although it was elaborate, it was tasteful. We spent quite a long time in there. We had suspected there would be a service in progress, but that was not the case. There was however a service in progress in the crypt. The antechamber was uninteresting but we could not (and would not have wanted to) enter the real crypt while a service was inprogress. A large burly man guarding the door was presumably there to turn tactless tourists away. The thought never entered our minds.

We walked down again and were surprised to see a WW-II army tank, protected by a sturdy steel fence, pointing its cannon directly at the cathedral. We continued through a garden and checked out some of the restaurants on the east side of the harbour as candidates for a lunch venue. We proceeded to the other end of the harbour, to the fort and small church there, and then on to the much larger church we had seen from the hill top. This was another fabulous structure with extensive decoration inside. Services had been cancelled for this Sunday, so we were initially almost alone inside.

We had lunch not far away on a small square with a view of Notre Dame du Gard and then proceeded to walk the History Trail, but this was a dud,so we broke off and went back to the hotel for a rest. Resuming again we saw a roman-columned pavilion where a small group of young Arab men were kicking a football around. I took two shots and proceeded to walk on. One of the young men then walked up and spoke to us. In a mixture of English and French I understood that he had some issue with me taking photos. He wanted to see the photos, presumably to see if he or his friends were on them. I obliged and deleted the offending photos, whereupon they all stood aside while I took the unobstructed photo I had really wanted all along. We shook hands in friendship and parted company. His parting shot was that I should be careful of "bad boys" in the area who might try to steal my camera. We continued to walk through this Arab area and felt perfectly safe there. On reflection, we think he was trying to improve his profile among his friends.




The GPS said we walked 19 Km this day. Note sure if I believe this.

We walked up the "Arc de Triomph" look-alike and photographed that before returning to the hotel. Dinner was in the port area with a great view of the cathedral on the hill. Our dinner was very good so we had an excellent evening.

This is probably the end of the blog, but there will be some tidying up when we return home.