Boiling, simmering: Marseille bouillabaisse

Graffiti as an art form in Marseille

Marseille is not necessarily touted as a prime destination in Provence where many search out the more pastoral lavender-encompassed villages.  It has a ‘reputation’, a port city rough around the edges that wears its sweat with pride. It looks south to Africa rather than north to Europe and it is this wonderful, heady mix of peoples of colour and traditions that make Marseille like the magnificent, boiling and simmering bouillabaisse for which it is famed. I have never been to New Orleans but I sense that the cultural mix that created its gumbo has a blood twin in Marseille.

My holiday last October to Provence and northern Italy was fraught with travel glitches and when I arrived at the Gare de St. Charles in Marseille after a day-long trip from  Cardiff to London to Paris to Marseille, the train was about half an hour late — not very late, but the difference meant that I was arriving in the darkness of early evening. My hotel base for four nights was only about a ten-minute walk from the station and also only a ten-minute walk from the Old Port, but immediately I realized I didn’t know how to get there.

Google maps nothwithstanding, when you step out of a European train station, it is often difficult to tell in which direction you are facing, and more often than not the signs, if they are there, cannot be seen in the dark. With guidance from the man in the station’s information centre, who knew as little English as I know French, I set off in the direction he pointed, only to come to a curve in the road within five minutes. As I followed the curve down to what I thought was the Old Port I realized that the area was becoming less travelled than more so and, map-in-hand, with faltering francais walked into a well-lit tavern, its windows and doors open to the street. Sun-kissed men, tired from a day’s work, checked my map, argued various routes amongst themselves and sent me back in the direction from which I had just come.

Ten minutes later I was on the other side of the train station, facing a major, well-lit street lined with cafes and eateries, bustling with mostly men who looked more Middle Eastern than French, and I knew that the street that my hotel was on was just a turn away. Every couple of blocks I stopped into a busy takeaway and sought directions. The streets curved and spun off, and some forty-five minutes later, purely by chance, I recognized a street name I knew to be near to my hotel, and finally, voila. I had traipsed, pulling my luggage, in a wide circle.

The steps leading down from the Gare de St. Charles — in daylight

I am not going to recommend my hotel. I only have myself to blame for not paying more heed to TripAdvisor ratings. The central location was ideal, the room clean (very important) and the bed good; it was on the corner of two very narrow cobbled streets, which one would think was fine, but actually proved to be its downfall. The weather was deliciously warm and a ceiling fan and open windows kept the heat at bay, but a Marseille sidestreet at night is remarkably noisy. The sounds of hosing water and the shifting gears of street cleaners and garbage trucks (going down each of the corner streets) and cars echoed off the stones and bounced around the walls of my room. The next morning the first thing I did was find a drugstore and buy earplugs, yet every night I could only sleep a couple of hours before being reawakened.

I wanted to go to the Noailles Market, also known as the Marche des Capucins, a boisterous North African market, only minutes from my hotel and buy my first meal of the day. I had read that some, if not many, of the people working or buying there, might not to want to have their photo taken for immigration reasons and to be sensitive to this: considerate advice. I love markets with their bustle and fresh foods.  At a stall selling fish I gestured to the man behind the counter with my camera and he shook his head ‘no’ — I pointed to the fish, and he smiled ‘yes’ and stepped out of the photo frame. I sensed in Marseille and at the market a sense of relief and freedom among people, a ‘coming-home’ for many, of a new start. I saw the great pride of men of colour walking in various native North African and African garb along Marseille streets and was struck by North American prejudices which most often put these men in positions of inferiority.

A section of the Marche de Noailles or Marche des Capucins

Most of my dealings with people in Marseille were with men and they were wonderful, engaging men — complimenting me on my limited French, speaking to me in their bad North American slang. If I said, ‘Je ne parle pas le francais’ they would ask me which language do I speak? Spanish, Italian, English? (in that order) and they would be ready to speak to me in one of those languages. As a North American, my lack of languages is embarassing in Europe.

I found a stall selling paella for only five euros. It was a good-sized portion and I walked down to the Old Port to eat by the boats in the sun. There were no utensils with the meal but I soon found that a mussel shell makes an excellent spoon. It is rare for me not to be able to finish a meal, especially something so delicious, but I found myself sunbaked and sated with leftovers for dinner.

My plan was to spend a day in Marseille and take a daytrip to Van Gogh’s Arles and St. Remy on day two, followed on the third day by an excursion to Aix-en-Provence and its Saturday markets. Early Sunday I would leave Marseille by train to go across the French Riviera to Genoa, Italy. But Marseille gripped me. After my visit to Arles and St. Remy I decided to stay put in Marseille and leave Aix-en-Provence for another trip. So, on a gloriously sunny Saturday I revisited the Noailles Market, bought foods for the day and explored the old, arty Panier district, the stunning waterfront museums and more of the city and its coastline.

Wall art in the Panier

The MuCEM — you can wander around this amazing building and its grounds without paying admission to the exhibits.

A rooftop at Fort St-Jean, attached to the MuCEM

The Notre Dame de la Garde can be seen from everywhere in Marseille and is nicknamed The Good Mother

The most dramatic football (soccer) pitch I have ever seen — it looks up at Notre Dame de la Garde

Sunset from the steps of Notre Dame de la Garde

Atop the Palais Longchamp, now museums

On one of my evenings in Marseille I ate at a local cafe, Saf Saf and had my first authentic couscous meal — a heady, chicken couscous with a deep, rich broth and found that couscous expands as you eat it. I ate and ate and every time I poured more broth onto the couscous, I seemed to be back at the beginning. For a second time in Marseille, embarrassed, I could not finish my meal.