Sunday, May 30, 2010

Day 70 Croix de Provence and Marseilles

The "early" start turned out to be 9:15, but that's not too bad considering all the cleaning up and packing that needed to be done. The journey was east along the A8 and naturally we took a wrong turn or two before getting on it. Relying on a GPS has certain drawbacks. Bruce was programmed to take us to La Croix de Provence outside Vauvenargues, east of Aix. As is his wont, he didn't direct us along the easy way to get there - around the mountain - but over it, a slow and not so pleasing way to go. A multi-waypoint capability would be helpful - not available on this Garmin 1390. Then we had trouble finding the start of the G9 track, but eventually saw H & B off at 11:45, agreeing to be back at 3pm. It looked a fairly challenging ascent, advertised as 3.5 hours return.

We pushed on to Aix en Provence only 7 Km down the same road. Bruce took us down the usual narrow lanes to get to the destination car park at the Palais de Justice, but guess what? There was a market day in progress so our progress was blocked. We did park successfully a little further out and walked down the main tourist route toward the centre, having a barely palatable focacce at the square opposite the cathedral. The old city is quite pleasant with lots of shops, many posh in certain areas, and a few good older public buildings. We walked along the wide tree-lined Cours Mirabeau, enjoying the openness and having smoothies and ice creams along the way to keep hydrated and cool.


Heading back, we stopped to visit the small tapestry museum in the old archbishop's palace. There were a good number of excellent pieces in very good condition, considering they were ca. 1680. We asked about this and were told that it was because they were cache. It took us a little while to understand that they had been stored away for a long period of time. Further along we also stopped in to see the cathedral, which had a few good colourful windows and a strange baptistry - a romanesque circular chapel with columns and separate dome.

We returned to the rendezvous point at 14:52 but the S's were not there yet, so after a short wait we repaired to the restaurant across the road for a coffee. The S's trickled in separately after we returned to the car at 15:30. We promptly returned to the café so they could have a beer. They were exhausted. Apparently it had been an unrelenting climb which also made the descent rather difficult. This news justified our prescience in declining this challenge.

Refreshed, we pushed on to Marseilles and eventually found our hotel in the Vieux Port area, and also managed to drop our car at the St Charles railway station Avis depot - no fuss, no bother, but we have to await the bill when it eventually comes.

After freshening up and finally updating the blog, we went out to dinner at a Tripadvisor-recommended seafood restaurant where we had the Sortie en Mer - seafood selection, with snails, prawns. mussels, clams, pippees, oysters, langustines and a crab, all for €43 for two people, along with a few pichets of rosé. After dinner we strolled down to the port and enjoyed the dramatic lighting on many buildings that emphasized their façades. The most impressive was at a roundabout at the end of our street, a hundred metres from our hotel. The whole area we walked through this evening has a strong Arabic flavour.

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