My Stay in Marseille

The destination for the trip for the previous weekend was the Mediterranean city of Marseille. The week prior was occupied primarily by a design where we worked on a project that a group of French and British landscape architecture students were also working on. It was or professor’s intention that we work in groups with the students or at least alongside them, however this was not the case as the French professors did not make accommodations for us to join them. We worked on the project anyway and then headed off for the weekend.

The trip to Marseille was about seven hours by train with one transfer. We arrived in town and checked in at our hostel. It was a very nice place with spacious rooms. Once we were settled we set off to explore the city. My target was a hill top church known as Notre-Dame de la Garde. It is an ornate Neo-Byzantine Basilica that overlooks the city. The view was incredible; we could see the entire city and well out into the ocean. The inside was of the Basilica was well detailed and adorned with the most exquisite marble. The top of the bell tower has a gold statue of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus that almost seems to keep watch over the city. Once we were done exploring the Basilica, we went to a much smaller church that had an ancient crypt underneath. The lighting in this church was not as good, and it had not aged well but the crypt was rather interesting. I was a little disappointed because I had expected it to be larger and to see more burial tombs. But most of the place had been excavated and set up for tourist visits. None the less it was still an interesting experience. That night we went out to dinner and I ordered grilled sea bass, as we were in a major port city and fish was usually fresh from the Mediterranean. It was fresh indeed; it was an entire fish. It still had eyes and scales. Aside from having to picking bones out of my teeth, the fish was very good. After a long day of excitement and train travel we went back to the hostel for bed.

The next day, we got up and ate our complementary continental breakfast and set out for day two of Marseille. We began by taking a boat out to a cluster of islands of the coast of the city known as the Frioul Archipelagos. One of the islands was made famous as the prison that the Count of Monte Cristo escaped from. We did not visit this particular island; however, I did get some good pictures from the boat. The Island we stopped on had some historic ruins and an old French military fortification from WWII that had been bombed to hell and back. The island was really beautiful and it was nice to be out in the sun for an extended period. My skin was clearly not prepared for February sunlight (I got a bit pink). We walked around the island for a few hours and returned to our pick up spot to wait for the boat. We waited, sitting in the sun, for a little more than a half hour; just enjoying our time. After returned to port, we had a late lunch and proceeded to explore the primary cathedral of the city. We had an interesting incident where a disguised police officer told us to put our cameras away as we looked too much like tourists. After a bit more wandering around, we went back to the hostel to recuperate and topped off the evening with a light dinner at a bagel shop (still full from our late lunch). I awoke the next day at around 5:00 a.m. as our group had to catch a train that departed at 7:00. After another seven hour train ride on Monday morning, we were back in Lille, just in time to go to class.