Marseilles had three self guided tours of the city marked onto the footpath, there is one of the old city, one of the new city’s churches, parks and monuments and one along the harbour and through the old castles that are / were there to protect the entrance of the harbour. We quickly settled on the tour of the harbour as it seemed like the best overall tour with interesting stuff to look at regularly as you walk, where as the others seemed to be a lot of walking and not much to see and do. First of all though we needed coffee and something to eat, of course for this there are many places to choose but we went for convenience, walking into the first one we came to on the waterfront. We got coffee, hot chocolate and croissants to take away and made our way to a little park with a lovely fountain that turned out to be some sort of memorial - it appeared to be for the French resistance but to be honest we couldn’t quite make it out. With lightly filled tummies we started off on our tour, it only took about ten minutes to get to the first stop which was, a fort-like cathedral. It was kinda strange from the outside looking how you’d expect a castle to look and definitely not a Cathedral but it was very nice on the inside. From there we moved onto the main fortress of the harbour ‘Fort St Nicolas’. This gave way to stunning views looking not just out to sea but back towards the city and marina as well. Other than the views though there wasn’t much else to do so after a few photos and some people watching we moved onto our next site ‘Le Parais Du Pharo’ This was a stunning palace overlooking the city with much of the same views as the fort, but with stunning grounds as well.We decided to stay for lunch at the front of the palace looking towards the harbour. By this stage it was getting to siesta time so we walked back to the hotel room which was conveniently at the start of all three walks and we decided that after a little rest including some reading - I’m getting so close to the end of my book - it’s hard to put down, that we would continue. Two hours later we emerged ready to take on the next walk but got side tracked when we sew a tour group in a strange little train like buggy on the road (kinda like what you would get in the botanical gardens) pulling into the other side of the marina. When we made it to that side we saw that it was a cheap trip to the stunning ‘Notre Dame’ at the top of a close hill and we had herd that this was definitely ‘the place to go’ by the one of the people at the Tourist Office. It sounded like a fun thing to do so we jumped on and were whisked away towards the Church. On the way we got info about the city by a cheesy American recorded tour guide, which to be honest I have completely forgotten already. We hadn’t really thought too much about the peak hour traffic - as you don’t on holiday, but imagine the you are on your way home from work and suddenly there is an open air train stopping beside you with old-folk fisherman music blaring away on the speakers with a bunch of people who are obviously tourist staring out at you - what I’m trying to say is that we got some funny looks… Anyway it was a spectacular view from the top and it was one of the strangest and most beautiful churches I have seen. It was grey stone mixed with sand stone, in a pattern around the outside and then was continued inside as well, with all the dim candle lighting, shimmering gold and the stained glass it was quite stunning. The tour only allowed us to stay at the ‘Notre Dame’ (this isn’t THE Notre Dame of Paris but of Marseilles) for twenty minutes but to be far that was all the time that we needed especially as Sarah had done another one of her famous ‘Oh bugger, I’m not wearing suitable clothing’, but the tour was worth it even if only for an hour or so we getting us back in time to do the old city tour before it got dark, and hopefully time to find something to eat other than baguettes, which are nice, but not for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I really don’t have much to write about the old city tour other than to tell you that the Marseillesians haven’t been too good at keeping the ‘old city’ and it was quite simply joke, with us deciding to turn back after seeing the two attractions - which we had to walk through some pretty ugly residential areas, to find some dinner just as the sun was setting and the sea breeze was picking up cooling the city down to low 20’s. We had almost made it the whole way back looking at all the menus trying to decipher what they might just be when I remembered that I had seen some people eating what looked suspiciously like fish and chips on the water front earlier and since we have both been craving a good hot dog and scoop of chips we went in search of this ‘fish ‘n chip shop’. We found it but for some reason there menu was in ‘French’ so we took a gamble and ordered what looked like a hamburger and chips turning out to be some weird mix of the two, it was simply a baguette containing the chips and meat all in one, but was very tasty. All in all a good day and we felt that we had seen enough of Marseilles for us to head for Avignon in the morning.

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