My brief journey to San Francisco complete, I couldn’t wait to get back on a plane and return to France. Kelly had been seeing the sights, including a return trip to Arles and their fantastic Saturday market, along with Cassis and the wonderful clear water inlets there. I felt like I had been missing out, but at the airport I scored a business class upgrade on British, so I made up for some lost time in France with some French wine with my dinner en route.
The pre-flight champagne was delicious, as was the dinner that was served, and I even sampled some of the port with my cheese.
After dinner I watched a show and then made up my lie flat bed- such a luxury. It felt like no time at all before I landed at Heathrow. I had a 3 hour layover, so I took advantage of my OneWorld status and had a shower at the lounge before my next flight. This is perhaps the single greatest luxury during travel if you have to make a connection, and on longer flights with a layover I pack a change of clothing to maximize that clean feeling. The flight to Marseille was unremarkable, as was the bus ride into the city, but coming up from the Metro and into the waiting arms of my lover was heaven.
We spent the next four days mostly in Marseille, walking in the humid heat and seeing as much as possible. We had a picnic at Parc Emile Duclaux, overlooking the city:
We visited the Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde, which is a gorgeous cathedral on a hill above the entire city, dedicated to sailors and those lost at sea, which overlooks the Chateau d’If:
We visited Fort Saint Jean, the commanding defense of the old city:
And Oh. My. God. We ate SO MUCH. The food in this part of the world is just so fantastic. The only reason we didn’t gain a thousand pounds is that we were walking about 8-10 miles per day. One of the most difficult parts of the entire trip was not consuming MORE than 2 bottles of wine per day.
I have to stop. We have so many pictures of food it’s kind of unbelievable.
In any event, we’d recommend Marseille itself for about 3 days, but definitely use it as a jumping off point to see Avignon, Arles, Aix en Provence, Toulon, and everything in between. All of it is a short train ride from Marseille.
Our next stop for the remainder of our travel would be Paris, and it didn’t disappoint…
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