Marseille

Marseille (from Notre-Dame de la Garde)

June is perhaps rather late to write about an escapade undertaken in March, but its memory is still fresh and fond.  How could it be otherwise, given that it was my good friend Chris who devised it?  It was my fault for omitting to tether his imagination.  Lest his plans for his week-end visit to Paris be taken for the work of a rational mind, he made sure that its principal component was a day-trip to Marseille, further from Paris than he had come from London.  

What is more, the existence of a rather speedy railway between the two cities lent this mad idea an alarming aura of feasibility.  We could leave it as late as 5.30 a.m. to undertake a journey of 489 miles (783 km), bask for seven hours in Mediterranean climes, make the same journey in reverse, and still, like James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree, be back in time for tea (if a rather late one at half past nine in the evening). 

La preuve: Gare de Meudon à 5h30 le matin

In the face of this itinerary, good sense counted for nothing.  So there we were at half past five in the morning at Meudon station, in time for the first train to Montparnasse, where we arrived in time for the first bus to the Gare de Lyon, where we arrived in time for a generous dawdle (better than the alternative) before being allowed aboard the only double-decker high-speed trains in the world.

I must commend Chris for his choice of seating.  Somehow he procured first-class seating with a negligible surcharge.  The overwhelming civilisation of it all helped us to overcome the discomfort of being the only scruffy Englishmen in a compartment of spruce French businessmen.  Before us, a petit-déjeuner was consumed convivially.  Beside us, the Figaro was leafed through at leisure.  Behind us was ruthlessly shovelled département after département.  As an exercise in competence, I went to purchase some coffee at the bar, where a ticket-inspector asked me his customary question.  I had incompetently left mine at my seat.  On the other hand, I discovered that my French was good enough to avoid this treatment, managed not to spill the coffee and informed Chris that the length of Marseille Cathedral's nave is 142 metres.  Barely had we pondered this sober truth than appeared at the window the station of Marseille Saint-Charles.  The hourglass was already trickling!

The climb was steep...

...and the weather drizzly...

Marseille has been a working city since antiquity.  It is all gathered around the Vieux-Port, which most ships outgrew in the 19th Century and which now shelters mainly pleasure-craft.  Most ships, cargo or cruise, must moor northwards along the coast, on the other side of Le Panier (a quartier whose mediaeval buildings were destroyed by the Nazis).  Chris and I set off southwards, up the hill on the southern side of the Vieux-Port, towards its crown, Notre-Dame de la Garde, a basilica in which generations of sailors spared shipwreck (men who, after all, 'see the work of the Lord'...) have expressed their gratitude to Our Lady.  The climb was steep and the weather drizzly, but the view from the top dizzying and the basilica magnificent. Almost all of Marseille can be seen from the church (and the church from almost all of Marseille).  The  have covered the walls with plaques, and model ships hang from the roof of the nave.  We are often prone to forgetting seafarers.  Not even our technological age can tame the sea.

...but the view from the top was dizzying...

and the basilica magnificent,...

The basilica from the Vieux-Port

Sainte Marie-Majeure - nave 142m

The climb and the profound musings had made us hungry: thank goodness then for the Restaurant L'Eau Vive which, being French, supplied us with a hearty meal at the foot of the basilica.  A bottle of wine was also indulged in.  All this was to aid our momentum back down the hill to a small beach (l'Anse des Catalans) where we had a look at the Mediterranean.  It was too cold for an encounter with it, even though the weather had brightened up and games were being played on the beach.  So we threaded our way around crammed junctions, circumnavigated the Vieux-Port with all its yachts, wandered through Le Panier, which I found quite overbearing because of the meaning of the modernity of the buildings, saw the Fort Saint-Jean (at the entrance to the Vieux-Port) being renovated, and crossed the small peninsula to the Cathedral of Sainte Marie-Majeure (nave 142m in length) - a surprisingly modern building (mainly 19thC) and very imposing.o

A cruise-liner passes the île d’If

And all at once the seven hours were running out.  We thought it prudent to repair to the station via a boulangerie, and have plenty of time before our train.  We had enough time for me to ask for a map and (to my horror) be given an English version, this seven months into my Year Abroad.  All because I failed to catch a joke!  Christopher, who can always be counted on for sympathy and understanding, responded with much mirth.o

Model ships in the Basilica

The train left at twenty three minutes past six; at half nine it slid into the Gare de Lyon.  By half ten we had reached journey's end, having crossed a country, and indeed Europe, arguably, twice in a day so that we could enjoy a seven-hour dawdle!   Christopher's next idea  is a Rhineland tour, awaited with trepidation by its participants and by the German people alike...o

Two views of the Vieux-Port

and finally... Fifty points for guessing correctly who is being imitated...