marseille

There’s a drummer who sits every day at the old port in Marseille. He wears socks without shoes. Not because he doesn't have shoes, though. His drum rings above the shouting of the crowd and the seagulls and the engines of small boats coming and going. Vieux Port is a hot, heaving splash of colour on the shore. The sun beats down with the sound of the drummer’s drum on the back of my skull. In a kind of thrilling, exotic way, a way I like. It’s midday and the restaurant umbrellas shade crowds from the sun. The masts of moored boats pierce the cotton clouds.

Marseille is a place of noise and movement. Sometimes it's hard to tell if the noise outside is a gory riot or a football game. Before dawn (yes, I did witness this, twice) doors are opening and the pavement is swept and tables and wares set out for the day. The homeless start to stir. By mid-morning the streets are heavy with people. There are kebabs-and-pizza shops, three on every block it seems, always with men sitting in their personal clouds of cigarette smoke outside. I will always associate felafels with this place.

We take an afternoon trip to the Castle at If. I know I have to go there from the moment I hear the name. I thought castles couldn’t get more whimsical than they get by simply existing. Oh, but they can. Call the castle If. You’ve done it.

The Chateau d’If seems to grow from the rock. It was used as a prison until the end of the nineteenth century, and the high stone walls on the upper levels speak of the important prisoners once held within them. They used an excellent fund-your-own-incarceration class system. Because wealthy criminals have more rights, you know. The cells are cavernous and cool and echo our footsteps; here and there a dark corridor twists away through the wall. These tunnels are barred with rusted grates, a fantastic move by whoever was trying to make the castle as creepy as possible in the brightness of the afternoon. It is far too easy to imagine a rotting breath coming from within, to picture an emaciated hand grasping from the dense dark. Shiveringly good. Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo walks the line here between story and legend and true history. The tale is laid side by side with the facts, and each seems as important as the other in the reality of If.

The views from the top battlement are worth the ten euro ferry just on their lonesome. Marseille sprawls along the coastal cliffs. The buildings look like they might crumble into the still sea. Away from the land, other dusty islands sprout the remains of the fortresses that once guarded the bay.

In Marseille, for some reason I feel close to history. More so than in the huge halls of Belgian cathedrals or burrowed beneath the city walls of Luxembourg. Here I can feel the reality of this place’s past: the invasions and revolutions, the gruesome heroic deaths, the smell of fish markets in peacetime. They're still kind of here. Something to do with the grotty, vibrant streets and the ocean.

The Musee des Civilisations de l'Europe et de la Mediteranee (MuCEM -- a much-needed acronym) is free for under 26s and worth the visit on a quiet morning. After a bit of a brain-filler we strolled through the narrow streets of the old town all strung with washing lines and windows flung open. There's all manner of old-town-ish things like lanterns and soap shops that smell cleaner than I have in a month.





All roads lead to the port road here, and we find ourselves back there. My favourite place is inland along La Canebiere. In the hot squalor of the main street it's a small relief. The kind of place you don't need to worry about the three things that worry me a lot in Europe: gluten, meat products, and smokers. At Green Bear Coffee, real, chunky-with-good-stuff salads and cakes sans gluten are served in cardboard with recyclable wooden forks. This probably warrants about half the word count I've given it but, cake. Cake. (Please see the photo below, which I dub 'speechless'.) You'll forgive me. And the floral couches apparently deter teenagers and men with cigarettes. I wanted to carry the darling owner around in my pocket for ever and ever.



We take a bus from La Canebiere to a popular beach (the kind of beach that I couldn't tell you the name of, only that we took the bus along the coast 'til we saw it). Tanned bodies cover most of the sand. Here are the people who couldn’t fit by the lake in Bled. The crystal water is stirred to a sparkling brown broth. It's passable because the day's hot.

We find our private beach at the Calanques to make up for it. Before you go on, I think you need to know t's pronounced like 'kalonks' and I can't even think the word without thinking of Kronk from Emperor's New Groove. Unfortunate, as the place is so breathtaking and deserves a more elegant mental image.

Before dawn we take a bus to Luminy and hike with the rising sun down a path between the white cliffs on the Calanque de Sugiton. We are alone on the dusty path. We sit on the pebbled beach and watch the sunlight crawl across the bay towards us, lighting the water brilliant turquoise. When the light is close we swim out to meet it. By ten-thirty or so others are arriving and we discover our secret is no secret. This is a popular Calanque hike, and by midday the beach will be thick with people scaling the rocks to jump into the ocean. We make our way back in the stinking heat and I try to keep only the picture of peace in the early morning and the white dust on my shoes.

 

The growing tourist industry in Marseille attests to its charm. The grubby, dilapidated city is oozing character, more than clean white walls could. The ocean is that Mediterranean blue of all your beach-related dreams. There are cathedrals and history, gory prison castles, dirty beaches, clean beaches, white cliffs to hike, and shovelfuls of felafels to spare if you’re willing to get a little gritty and embrace the rough-as-fish-guts culture of a vibrant old port town.