Marseille

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Marseille

We traveled from Paris across France to Marseille Frances 2nd largest city, also a seaside port city like Hamburg in these two regards however except for there being heaps of seafood and fish they couldn't be more different.
Marseille is an ancient port city, for a 1000 years ships have docked here, but it's on the Mediterranean sea and Marseille is a melting pot of cultures. There's a strong north African influence, the markets back up the hill from Vieux port are described as souk like, were incredible. I walked around the area in the Belsunce quarter a few times. 
What made Marseille different from anywhere else we have been outside of Switzerland is here we caught up with an Internet friend Annie who I knew through our common music obsessions. Annie runs a web site called melting pod, which does wonderful podcasts. We met up went round her unit a while, went out to a restaurant and later went to a small exclusive Marseille night club to see some Marseille style post punk bands doing there thing. It was a fantastic time all round. We needed to see some of the sights of the area and in the morning we took a short boat trip out to the near by Frioul islands. It was sunday so the smaller boats had pulled in to sell their wares, a fantastic fish market, with all sorts of things for sale.
There's 4 islands in the Frioul archipelago, the area is beautiful. Limestone, clear blue water, unusual plants, wild herbs like the wonderful sea lavender. Also it has fortress's that date back to the 1500,s. We walked along the tracks for a hour, I could have stayed overnight, a very special place with it's Mediterranean location,
So much different from the cities we have spent a lot of time in lately.
Back on the mainland we wandered the streets of old Marseille with it's narrow cobble stone streets. Looked through some of the shops that sell some of the nicest touristy stuff Ive seen, there's an old tradition of soap making here, it's olive oil based. There's herbs, olive oils, wines and model ships.
I had the classic speciality of Marseille Bouillabaisse that evening, it's a fish potato stew I guess is the best way to describe it, the soup part has a kind of curry type flavor, I will have to look up how it's made.
Marseille has a large tourism industry butt seems it's a little of the beaten track for English speaking tourists, all they were all hiding while we were there. I loved it, I was reminded of Brazil more than once.
We now are in Italy now in transit as I write this, it's been another 10 hr train trip with some 4 train changes, we had a 2hr stop just over the border had my first Italian pizza which was good. I think I shall enjoy Italy!         
     

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