The end of the road by car,Marseille

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It has been a warm night in our Première Classe room and Gretchen heard the neighbours talking for a good part of the night.
This morning has dawned a bit overcast but we are still avoiding the rain and the forecast for the day is good in Marseille which is our destination by the end of the day.In fact we will be less than 3 hours on the road if all goes according to plan.
The cleaners started early this morning at the hotel and they look to be waiting for us to depart so they can give the room the 5 minute clean that they spent on the rooms vacant already.
It may have been the best thing that the hotel in Marseille wanted to take the microwave and toaster off our hands as we don’t think we would have got out of the hotel car park before the cleaner would have been in our room and noticed what we had left behind and chased us to ensure we took all our belongings.
We have travelled over part of the road we are taking to Marseille today already when we picked that useless Harry Hyundai up and drove to Avignon so we don’t plan to do any sightseeing on our way into Marseille to return Olly Opel.
We have chosen a hotel that is near the TGV station and it is there that we also drop the car back so it all should fit nicely.........once we find where St Charles Station actually is.The map we have of Marseille is very detailed but that doesn’t and hasn’t always meant that we have found our destination without some difficulty.Although, we have always got to where we wanted to be at the end of the day!!
We filled OO with diesel near the airport and drove onto the A7 for the last leg into the city following the directional signs for the Gare St Charles emerging where we hoped we would almost at the station.
Arriving into Marseille on a Saturday rather than a work day was probably fortuitous as the traffic was light as we reached the station.We knew the street where the hotel was ran off from the area of the station but we didn’t notice it as we drove on.However,there were signs for parking at the station so we followed those as we had decided that we would park OO and then walk to find the hotel and plan how to park the car and unload the luggage.As we proceeded to the car park we passed the rental car return so that was half the battle over.
It didn’t take long finding the hotel and we had driven past it as we came past the station entrance although it was no wonder we missed the street as it was a one way affair.It had bollards down both sides to create footpaths for pedestrians and a single lane for cars so stopping outside even to heave the luggage and microwave in, was going to be a problem.
However,when we did drive back we found a place to stop around the corner and I made three trips with our stuff while Gretchen kept the engine running in case she had to move on with the car.When we did eventually leave to drive to the rental car drop off we discovered that the street we had parked in while we unloaded had been one way and we were facing the wrong way!!Had we been 10 seconds longer we might have had an angry local tooting his horn at us because a car came into the street as we exited.
The rental car return was an odd arrangement in that you drop the car back in a shed without anyone in attendance and then walk 400 metres or so to a makeshift office at the side of the station.Even then all that happened was we handed the keys over and we were on our way.No questions about whether we had damaged the car in any way which of course we hadn’t.
Marseille is described in the Lonely Planet as a gritty city and it certainly is in more ways than one.
It may have been because we had spent our first hour or so around the station area which has a reputation for prostitutes at all hours of the day and the anti-social types that tend to go with that activity that we had immediately picked up on the gritty atmosphere.Anyway we will take a walk down to the harbour after we check in and see if there is another side to the city.
The Hotel Vertigo must have been something else in an earlier life as the entry didn’t have the appearance of it being built as a hotel.It was described on the website we booked through as a cross between an upmarket backpackers and a hotel and so it appears on the inside.
We have booked a deluxe room with ensuite but we didn’t read the small print!!
The room is located on the fourth floor and there is no lift!!!!!
Gretchen did her usual thing and wanted to carry her suitcase up the four flights of narrow stairs and to be fair she has done that everywhere on this adventure,even if I have come and helped her out once I have got my suitcase to the room.And so it was on this occasion and I met her on the landing of the third floor.She reckoned that if she had longer legs she would have made it on her own!!
We have our own terrace outside the room,not that the view is that great,just the chimneys and roof’s of the neighbouring buildings in the foreground and a glimpse here and there of taller buildings further away.
We always check out the procedure for evacuation in a fire,not that we spend a lot of time on it but just in case, we like to know where we go in the event of an emergency.
At Hotel Vertigo(named after the Alfred Hitchcock movie by the way if the film posters in the lobby are anything to go by)doesn’t have any other formal escape routes other than the narrow windiung stairs we came up.Well,at least from the fourth floor that is.We resolved to check out if the procedure was any different from the lower floors when we went out for our walk.
There was one other way for us in an emergency and that was from our terrace onto a neighbouring roof.How one would cope with a sloping tiled roof didn’t bear thinking about and so we shall just hope that no emergency occurs during our nights stay.
Places offering accommodation to the public in New Zealand,even backpackers,would never get away without having at least two clearly marked fire escapes.We have also found that many of the places we have stayed in Europe have not even had a simple smoke alarm in the room.We know this because we always checked when we were preparing to toast our bread when fixing our breakfast as Gretchen has this thing about not wanting to set off the hotel alarm and us being discovered that we are cooking for ourselves in the room when we probably shouldn’t be!! The UK we must add was different and there were smoke alarms almost everywhere in the places we stayed.
We do have this Kathmandu gadget that Leigh and Cormac gave us that senses a fire but after Gretchen asked Leigh online early in our adventure how the thing worked only to be asked by Leigh ‘were we winding her up or something’(she probably thought we were staying in some dosshouse!!) We never really got back to using it.We had left the instructions at home!!
The city was busy with people and after we took in the cathedral built in the mid 1800’s we headed down towards the waterfront. On the way we came across a large gathering of people stopped to listen to a band of musicians playing music from an area of the Pyrenees.It was an interesting blend of flutes,bagpipes and drums with other instruments thrown in as well such as a guitar or two.The city was starting to come up in our sights!!
The harbour area we walked to was essentially a vast marina with boats of all types although no super yachts here perhaps because Marseille is not like a Nice or Monte Carlo!!Like most waterfronts though there were dozens of restaurants and after we took a stroll around to where we could see the open sea we walked back via the restaurants checking out their menus to see if they fitted the BBA budget.
While we strolling down on the waterfront we thought about my father who left Europe for New Zealand from Marseille just before the Second World War and of course ended up marrying and having the five Benvie kids.We have photos of him sitting outside a cafe with wicker chairs and surrounded by several women and we have never been sure if this was taken in Marseille before he left for New Zealand or somewhere else at some other time.We can envisage it being Marseille as the background in the photo looked like it might have been Marseille.
We discovered a couple of options and noted them for later in the evening for when it got time to have dinner.Some of the restaurants offered the local dish Marseille is famous for,Boulabaisse,a large pot of mixed fish and mussels,but at €48 for two,it won’t make the BBA budget!!Perhaps we copuld find somewhere that could give us a taster for a couple of Euros!!
We were getting back near our hotel when we remembered we had passed a restaurant while searching for the hotel that was packed with people having lunch.’Packed’ usually means it has to be good so we went back to it and found they had a set menu of 3 courses,with a number of options in each course,for €12 each.AND they threw in a small carafe of wine!!All this and within the BBA budget.So will be returning later when it is dinnertime.
So after a beer and snacks back in our hotel room we headed out for dinner to the little restaurant with the all in deal.When we arrived we weren’t sure it was the same place as it was empty except for a sole diner and yet it had been full at lunchtime.Perhaps at 8pm it was just too early for the locals to be out dining.
We went in anyway and indicated to the waitress that we would have the set menu.She didn’t speak a lot of English and her French was just too fast for us to pick up enough of what she said about a couple of things we asked her about as options on the menu.Gretchen was interested in a particular dish and asked the waitress what it actually was as we couldn’t make that out from the menu.She ran her hand up her other arm a couple of times and Gretchen though she had been referring to thin strips of red meat.
The entree arrived and Gretchen had a huge slice of pate which I had to help her with It was very good with a strong meaty flavour.I had a fillet of fish on potatos which was also very tasty.
So we had got off to a good start!!
The mains then arrived and mine was a very meaty pork sausage with a light and very delicate white sauce which had a hint of mustard seed with chips and lettuce.It was very tasty and for me a great choice.
Gretchen however wasn’t so lucky and it was shades of the Greek Isles again when she ended up with chicken livers when she thought she was in for chicken pieces.This time what she thought might have been a rare piece of beef turned out to be a couple of sausages that looked like black pudding and that was what it was except they had an almost sweet taste to them.She struggled a bit after the waitress came to check how we were going and when Gretchen asked what was in the sausage and discovered that it was the sort of stuff black pudding is made of she couldn’t go any further and in the end I helped her out.
We worked out that the waitress running her hand up her other arm was to do with blood being extracted and hence the black pudding type sausage!!!
To finish up Gretchen went for a peach melba and wasn’t at all disappointed while I had pears helene!!
So tomorrow it is Paris on the TVG and 4 nights and 3 days to see the sights in one of the great cities of the world!!Here’s hoping there is no fire alarm in the hotel tonight!!

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Photos

Sucess!!
We have condensed down to 2 suitcases and 2 backpacks from the mess on the bed from yesterday!!