La Marseillaise

Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Marseille, Provence, France
We BlaBlaCar'ed it one hour southeast of Arles to Marseille. Do you know why I love BlaBlaCar? Because our nice driver picked us up at our Arles hotel, dropped us one block from our Marseille hostel, and charged us a third of what a train ticket costs...plus the fun of having friends in a foreign country for an hour!

We arrived in Marseille a bit before 11am, and set out to explore the city. Marseille is the second largest city in France, next to Paris, and France's oldest city. I didn't really comprehend HOW ancient this city was until we were following the tourist office's historical walking tour, and it sent us to a street that was created by the Romans in 600BC. Marseille has been an inhabited city for over twenty-six centuries, and that's not even counting the paleolithic evidence of civilization dating from circa 27,000BC. That's astounding. I marvel at the Roman ruins near our mews in London, but those walls are seven hundred years younger than Marseille's Roman cities.

We continued our city walk to the stunning waterfront. Until recently, Marseille has been known, as a French colleague of mine says, "as a bit of a shithole." It was a port of call for sailors to fight and drink at the turn of the last century, and then post-world wars, a huge influx of immigrants changed the face of Marseille (translation: brown people scary to white people). But in the last decade Marseille, like so many other waterfront cities, has cleaned up its waterfront and experienced a rebirth. It's truly one of the most stunning waterfronts I've ever seen.

At the end of the walking tour was the photo that I've seen on every article about Marseille; the shimmering Mediterranean, filled with bobbing boats, and the Notre-Dame de la Garde church against a clear blue sky. What I got to experience in person, however, is not in that photo: The mistral gale-force winds, at over 65mph, that made standing at the water's edge perilous for both myself, and my camera phone. I had difficulty getting a clear photo because my phone, and even my sunglasses, were nearly blown out of my hands, and off my face. We couldn't hear each other talking because of the howling wind. Apparently today's wind was extreme, so lucky us that our next stop was atop Marseille's highest point at Notre-Dame de la Garde.

We walked up the hill to the church, and the higher we climbed, the scarier the wind became. Perched atop the hill, with nothing to break the wind, people were literally holding onto their small children to prevent their being blown over the side. As I attempted to enter the church, a powerful gust of wind blew me full force into a security guard with a machine gun. Luckily she didn't even blink. I got the impression I wasn't the first person to do that today.

The view from Notre-Dame de la Garde was stunning, though we obviously didn't linger at the wall's edge. We (carefully) made our way back down the steps and to lower, safer ground, but our plans of a picnic in the park were no longer viable. We consoled ourselves by walking through Marseille's grand pedestrian boulevards, and photographing Chateau d'If, Marseille's version of Alcatraz, made famous in Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo."

Dinner was to be our highlight to Marseille. Marseille is famous for its bouillabaisse, a fish and saffron stew that happens to be one of my favorite dishes. But true Marseille bouillabaisse does not come easy or cheap; research revealed to me that if you want real, true Marseille bouillabaisse, the cheap tourist version isn't even close to the real thing, which should cost a minimum of 50 euros per person (eek). And France being France, the "real thing" means the restaurant is a member of the Bouillabaisse Charter of 1980, stating that only true recipes and ingredients are used. So I had made reservations weeks ago at Chez FonFon, one of the original members of the Charter.

Chez FonFon has one of the most stunning settings I've ever seen. It sits inside a tiny cove filled with boats, colorful houses, and framed by Vallon des Auffes, an ancient Roman bridge. It looks like a movie set, and we were even given the prime window seat.

Eating bouillabaisse in Marseille is such an important event that we were given specific instructions: Do not eat much the day you're to have it for dinner; do not order appetizers, or too much wine. And the serving of bouillabaisse is a specific ritual. First, the waiter brings out the uncooked fish for you to inspect- we were offered rockfish, river fish, and several others that I couldn't identify. And then, when the meal begins, you are brought a basket of small toasts, and two small bowls of garlic and saffron rouille, or mayonnaise. Then your heated bowls arrive, and a roaming waiter fills it with the saffron and garlic soup base; you then float your toasts in the soup.

After fifteen minutes or so, your platters of cooked fish are presented; you float several pieces of the fishes at a time in the soup, and eat it with the toasts. And the roaming waiter with the tureen of broth is instantly at your tableside if your bowl's soup level gets too low.

It's a gut-buster. We spent nearly three lovely hours savoring this incredible soup, the view, and our last night in Provence. As Matt said, it was a perfect ending to our week in France (also: Matt said he was too full to order dessert. If that alone doesn't convey how huge this meal was, I don't know how else to express it.).

So that is the end of our lovely week in Provence. I would love to return- I've been absolutely charmed by the food, weather, sights, and people. And the wine. Duh.

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