Day 11 - Marseille

Distance Walked: no idea, Alcohol Consumed: 2 glasses pastis, 1 glass red wine

My hotel here offers the most lavish breakfast made available to me this holiday.  There is scrambled eggs and bacon, pastries, bread, yoghurt and fruit.  However, as I was doing my food tour this morning I just (!) had a croissant with jam and a huge cup of cafe au lait.

I had to meet my guide, Oriane, in a square near the old port, which I had thought was a terrible place to meet as it wasn't a single place. However, we were the only people loitering in the square so it as easy for us to find each other.  The tour turned out to be excellent.  She was friendly, knowledgeable, passionate about both Marseille (she's a local) and its food and also easy to talk to.  It was like wandering around town with a friend, exploring all the cool places to go.  She had carefully picked all the stops and was on good terms with all the shopkeepers.  The only drawback of having a personalized tour was I felt obliged to buy something at most of the stops, since I was getting free samples.

The first stop was a sweet shop that sold calissons, which are a famous delicacy of the region - although I'd never heard of them.  They are made from ground almonds and are flavoured with fruit syrups.  The traditional one is flavoured with some sort of citrus fruit, but you can gets ones with all sorts of flavours including pistachio, chocolate and, since it is Provence, lavendar.  I got to try several and therefore had to buy a selection.  Next stop was an incredible chocolate shop that makes chocolate from just cocoa, sugar and olive oil, no milk or butter.  I thought the combination would be disgusting but it was delicious.  Again, after much sampling, I bought some which may or may not make it home with me.  They ship internationally in any case.

Next we stopped at a soap shop.  Soaps made with olive oil are a big product here too.  The owner doesn't like the English, but is OK with Australians.  However, I had to promise to bring him a kangaroo next time I visited.  I bought samples from there too, which helped soften his mood.

Next stop was for ice cream, but not at the factory, just a shop that sold it so I could just eat it with a clear conscience.  Next was a bakery for the local biscuit - the navette.  It is quite dry as it is designed to be eaten after a meal with either coffee or sweet wine, so I just ate my sample and didn't feel any complusion to buy any more.  Next we went to a bar and had a glass of an upmarket pastis while nibbling on a plate of olives.  After that we went to the shop where that particular variety is sold and sampled their even more upmarket version - it is dyed blue.  The shopkeeper there is grumpy, which is why we'd gone to the bar first, so both Oriane and I felt it was OK not to buy anything.

The final stop was a trendy bar to try some panisse, which is a fritter made from chickpeas, which is forgetable.  In between all this we wandered around the Le Panier district, which is the first part of Marseille to be settled, and Oriane gave me her take on the local history.  A very pleasant morning that made me like Marseille a lot better.

After the tour was done I randomly chose a bistro in Le Panier for lunch based on the friendliness of its waiter.  Again, this was a mistake.   I had tarte provencal to start with.  The toppings - essentially all the things you would get in ratatouille were tasty - but the pastry base was soggy.  Main was tagliatelle with pesto, which managed to be dull.  How something stuffed full of parmesan, basil, not to mention, garlic can be dull boggles me, but they did it.  I finished with a quite decent coffee, so it wasn't all bad.

After lunch I visited the Museum of the Roman Docks.  This is actually an old Roman warehouse that has been partially excavated.  There are about a dozen huge amphora embedded in the ground and displays all around about the docks during Roman times.  It is a tiny museum that doesn't get a lot of visitors.  I'm afraid I woke up the attendent when I showed up, but she was so pleased to have someone interested in her museum.

Next stop was the museum of the history of Marseille.  This was not so friendly a place.  It is at the back of a shopping centre and it is not obvious how to get in.  I walked through the shopping centre twice before circumnavigating the entire place before I found the entry tucked away down a lane.  It was an interesting museum on the history of Marseille from neolithic times to the present.  There has been a settlement here for well over 2500 years, a fact of which they are very proud.  Most of the signs were in French, but some were in English.  They also had a free audio guide that described the main items and the theme of each room.  Unfortunately, the displays had been moved around since the audio was recorded and "look to your right and you will see xyz" didn't always make sense. 

Still, I was enjoying the visit.  However, 1/2 an hour before closing time I was hustled off the floor I was on and on to the next one.  Fifteen minutes before closing I was hustle out of there too.  They clearly wanted to shut the doors on the dot of closing time and wanted the place clean and tidy and empty of pesky visitors before then.  I went back to not enjoying Marseille so much after that.

For dinner I decided I wanted comfort food, so I stopped at the first place I came to that served pizza cooked in a wood fire.  It was delicious, if an enormous serve.  I then wandered back to my hotel.  I don't like the area I'm staying in.  It is a pedestrianised area full of shops such as shoe shops and clothes shops and the like, so at night there is no one around as everything is shut.  When I say there is no-one that is not exactly correct.  There are random clots of teenagers and young men loitering in doorways.  I don't like it.