Marseille - Cultural Gem of the Mediterranean
Marseilles was another port of call where we decided to just wander around town rather than book a planned excursion through MSC. We were both pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed Marseille. We didn’t really know what to expect, but we came to see why it’s considered a cultural gem throughout the Mediterranean.
The Cathedral of Notre Dame de la Garde is a beautiful little basilica that sits at the highest point in town. Yay, more hills! There is a bus that will take you to the top of the hill, but rather than trying to figure out the bus schedule, we decided to punish our feet a little more. If my feet could think for themselves, they’d think I’m a sadist. I slap them against concrete, I jump on them, I cram them in tight spaces all day, I don’t know why them complain so much.
Walking up the hill did afford us some cool graffiti sightings and a pretty view of the sun glinting off the gold statue of the Madonna with child that sits atop the bell tower. The gold plated statue can be seen from the sea from quite a distance. The cathedral is named Our Lady of the Guard for the sailors who used it as a navigational beacon throughout history. The outside is striped with white limestone and green marble, and the inside has a striking red and white striped marble and sandstone. The ceiling of the cupola is covered in gold leaf and there are sailboats hanging from the ceiling to pay homage to sailors.
We wandered around the Museum of Mediterranean Culture, which are two connected museums. One side is built within the old Fort Saint-Jean, a 17th Century fortress, and the other side is a modern looking lattice cube that houses art collections. They’re linked by an elevated foot bridge, and the two structures could not be more starkly different. The art exhibits didn’t particularly move me, but what we really enjoyed was walking around the fort and the exterior of the modern building. My favorite part was the juxtaposition of two completely different types of architecture and time periods. Ashley’s favorite part was listening to the audio guide while wandering through the old fort and learning about how it has been used throughout history. When it was originally constructed in the twelfth century they were able to keep out crusaders by linking a giant chain underwater at the entrance of the port, and it would catch the keel of any intruding ships. When King Louis XIV took it over in the 17th century and built it up larger, he maintained it as a fort not against enemies coming from the sea, but from his own city. He had the cannons pointed inwards toward the townspeople who were not so fond of him rather than towards the sea.
Unfortunately Ashley didn’t get to listen to the whole audio guide like she would have liked because her bank account was hacked and she had to spend about 40 minutes on the phone with Chase. Phone service has been reliable in some places and non-existent in other places.
So when you have service at the top of a 12th century fortress, you use it. This would be the first of many frustrating phone calls with Chase. It’s never a good time to have to cancel your bank account, start a new one, and reconfigure all of your auto-pay accounts, but it’s a special pain in the ass when it happens while you’re out of the country with limited access to internet and phone service. Ashley has been maintaining her award winning patience throughout the ordeal. If it happened to me, I’d have thrown my phone in the ocean by now.
We had no idea what to expect from Marseille, but we quite enjoyed this little town and would have been happy to stay longer. But this ship waits for no one.