(Editor's note: I realized with a jolt today that there was a hideous white background on the last posting of this chapter in the Irelandiary. I have jumped through a few hoops to resolve the issue and hope that this will look a bit better).
We woke up to the usual Paris downpour Friday morning, put an egg in our shoe, and beat it.
After a tense hour hopping metro after metro to reach le Gare de Lyon, we boarded our Southbound train in true wagon wheel style. As usual, i fell into a comatose state, drooling over Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, and only awoke when the light of the sun over Avignon touched my face.
WOW.
If I were an antipope, I would want to chill in Avignon too.
The thin corridor of South France I saw from the windows of the bullet train was ripped straight from the pages of a fairytale. Vineyards bursting with blooms and flowering lavender fields sped by next to pure white cattle, happily cropping grass almost so green as to rival that of Ireland. Almost, but not quite. Even the swollen, floody rivers looked serene and perfect, welcoming to a princess or a unicorn who might want to go for a picturesque paddle.
Avignon, crowned with a castle-like cathedral and a cape of tile-roofed houses, was equally unreal. By the time we rolled into Marseille I was itching to feel the sun full on my face and go running through a field of flowers.
Instead of flowers I got sugary soft sand and crashing clear waves. the Mediterranean is insanely clean this time of year, more like a mountain lake a few thousand feet above sea level than a proper salt water body. We found a cheap, Bohemian hostel for pocket change along Vieux Porte and switched out of our heavy Paris woolens. I hadn't been warm for upwards of three months so the sun and the salt breeze, cool though it was, felt like heaven.
We have been in Marseille for four whole days since then, and they've been utter bliss. Marseille has officially stolen my heart. It is centered around a narrow harbor that is home to a thick forest of sailboat masts. Yachts and ships and dashy cigarette boats are perennially cruising the water and the sea outside of its mouth is always dotted with the snowcapped peaks of set sails. People in Marseille take the French custom of eating long to an entirely new level; dinner takes place on one of the hundreds of patios throughout the city's squares, starting no earlier than eight o'clock and going until eleven or later. It's a relaxed, easy-going city where wandering opera singers serenade you from the edges of gurgling fountains and the locals think nothing of taking a day off to sunbathe off of one of the myriad piers that stretch into the perfect blue water.
One remarkable aspect of Marseille is the lack of English. While many tourists from other parts of France as well as Italy, Spain, Lithuania, and Russia have made their niche there, the anglophones seem to have bypassed it entirely. The only fluent speakers we've encountered have been:
A couple of our friends from Cork, who got lost on their way to Florence and wound up in Marseille
A old British sea captain who befriended our group of Cork Americans and bought us drinks for our language skills
Various though sparse waiters, tourist office workers, and transportation officials
The radio. France loves Macklemore as much as the rest of the world, obviously.
Other than that, the widespread use of English signage and language was left behind in Paris. Sometimes we go entire days without speaking to other people in English. It is a strange and wonderful circumstance, although my French skills hardly hold up.
The Saturday after our arrival we took in the city, buying fruit at a street market and eating it with our feet in the sea. Street fairs and buskers line the harbor and there seems to always be some variety of music. Notre Dame de la Garde is Marseille's stunning basilica; it sits high on a hill overlooking the city, crowned with a massive golden figure of Our Lady. The walk up to it will steal the lungs right out of you but is worth every gasping step up the vertical mountain for the view from the top and the fantastic interior. Tall ships in miniature are suspended from the ceiling and glowing gold mosaics depicting storms at sea sit behind the altar. There are small chapels to the souls of a thousand drowned sailors (I am beginning to sense that this is a theme of this blog) flickering with votive candles. It is absolutely majestic, and has a creditable crypt. On this day we also saw the Marseilloise maritime museum (with many fascinating old nautical devices and more thousand drowned sailor memorials) and walked up to the Pharo, a lovely castle/fort thing with a tower and a strange statue of a man playing the tambourine while fighting off a pair of gamboling bear cubs.
Sunday I went to mass at Notre Dame de la Garde, which meant another intense hill-climb. If i am ever at leisure to do so I will move to Marseille and go to daily mass at N.D. De la Garde. Eventually, from the daily exertion of the hill climb, I will develop the musculature of the incredible hulk. Not only will I be praying a whole lot but I will have the sort of legs that bust out of skinny jeans when I get mad. FIT.
After mass we hopped on a bus and rode it to the end of the line, to Les Calanques, a series of amazing cliffs, coves, beaches, and crags just East of the city. These massive limestone crags are ideal for hiking and we went on a nice, long trek to the top and back before finding a rocky cove where the locals had all come to sunbathe. The water was icy and a bit cool for swimming but soaking in the awe-inspiring scenery and fresh air made up for the fact. The terrain was rugged and my Timberland boots got a good workout, and I myself have developed a deep suntan. We spent all day bouldering and photographing incredible cliffside vistas and returned to Marseille late and altogether quite frittered. Still, we treated our famished selves to a classic Provence patio supper complete with an odd berry soup for dessert that was one of the best things I have ever had the pleasure of consuming.
Monday we made tracks for the harbor and boarded a ferry to Ile d'If. Anyone mildly familiar with the stupendous doorstopper of a novel called The Count of Monte Cristo will recognize this name as the rocky, desolate hellhole housing the Chateau d'If, an island jail for French political prisoners where our hero Edmond Dantes is imprisoned early on in the novel so that scheming Fernand Mondego can steal his fiancee, the lovely Mercedes, from under his nose. Alexandre Dumas, the author of said brilliant novel, made no bones about the horrific nature of the isolated If, but from the coast of Marseille it looks like a fairly pleasant place. Indeed, after a twenty-minute cruise over sapphire seas we bumped up against its much-decried pier and piled off onto its echoing cobbled walkways. I kept waiting for howling prisoner ghosts in clanking chains to ruin the brilliant blue skies and flower gardens bursting with poppies that cover the isle, but those ghosts never came. Compared to the Cork jail, or even the State Penitentiary where I gave tours last summer, the cells were all kinds of cushy with fireplaces and big windows. I would pick a sentence on d'If any day if it came down to it.
It turned out that I would get my chance to break some laws and chance jail sooner than I may have thought. After oohing and aahing over If's beauty and literary significance for a while we hopped on a passing boat. Hoping to get back to Marseille and food to quiet our garrulous stomachs, we were somewhat alarmed when the boat ploughed off into the salty deep and mists. When the maritime haze cleared it became apparent that the boat was bound for Les Friouls, a pair of secluded harbor islands beyond If. Our cursory study of the literature told us that there were beaches and a charming small town (presumably with food) somewhere on Les Friouls; was it worth it to chance disembarking there to avoid the cold hour's ride back to the mainland?
Fortune favors the bold, one might say, and we boldly strolled off the boat when it docked in Frioul town, hoping that we could also bold-stroll our way back to Marseille. Our rebellion was instantly rewarded by the appearance of a creperie and a pebble path leading to a dramatic cliff walk, beaches, and a mysterious structure called Fort Brigantine. We spent the rest of the day running about on the islands, startling nesting seagulls who loomed out of the abundant flowers in the most alarming manner. The fort turned out to be an abandoned villa of sorts, perfect for exploring and watching sailboats tack about in the sea beyond. Through the art of deception and acting cool we bold-strolled our way onto a boat and were back in Marseille before dark.
Tuesday I made a curtailed attempt to reach the tiny Catalonian town of Collioure, a story to be detailed at a later time in another blog post. After I returned from my early morning jaunt to the train station across town we set off to further discover Marseille, eating one-euro strawberries on le plage Malmosques and seeing the Port d'Orient, a majestic statue marking, for all intents and purposes, the gateway out of the Western world. We took it fairly easy, having walked our feet off the two days before.
Wednesday I finally made my pilgrimage to Collioure (an epic tale of late trains, vast vineyards, and kind old prizefighters that I will save for another day) and today, Thursday, we hopped a flight for Naples. I was quite saddened to see Marseille drop away into the maritime mists this afternoon, having left a sizeable chunk of my heart there, but I won't complain; the world awaits!
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