Cruise - Day 2 - Marseille

After a good night's sleep, I awake at 7am just in time to see the approach and arrival of our first stop – Marseille.  I was here for my first time 24 years ago.  At that time I arrived as a young single man by train from the north.

Now, early this morning we sail past a small village on a rocky edge in the hazy gray morning light.  It was so cool to see a faded-out-by-the-haze, yellowish train, cross the bridge.  But by the time I pulled out my sleepy camera from its padded case, hit the 'on' button and waited for it to yawn open and focus its eye on the world, the efficient trains of European travel had already crossed the bridge and passed into a tunnel as it disappeared one car at a time.

We get up, pop pills, wash the gunk of air-travel out of our hair and ready to greet the new day.  First event – is the African decorated Zanzibar breakfast (and lunch) banquet buffet.  It's a mad pandemonium feeding frenzy.  Broad hipped women, crying children, “don’t-bother-me” teenagers and big bellied men - all in a panic to get the food they paid for.  The buffet is huge and I mean H-U-G-E.  There is more than you can eat but some of it you dare not.  Others will do whatever they can to take in enough calories to stuff a herd of wild elephants. 

Wow – what a shocker of a breakfast experience.  Hot food over here.  Cold food way over there.  Pancakes at that end of the hall. Burnt waffle sugar hovering in the air. Brown water called coffee or as they say on this ship coffee-ah is right there next to the juice machine that is bone dry - all 5 flavors.  Need a spoon for your thick brightly colored sugar milk with the name ‘yogurt’ printed on the label?  Good luck – spoons were exceptionally hard to come by on this boat – why?  Toast is over there but the butter is at the other end of the table.  Don’t forget to take the stuff as soon as you see it because if you can find an empty table, you will have to walk and walk and walk back to one of the food stations to get what you need. That's how it was described: Food Stations.  Trying to fill your plate with just the basics was a 20 minute job.  That soft boiled 5 minute egg ? – it’s been boiled at least 20 minutes; black on the inside and hard as a rock.  2-egg omelets were made while you were still in bed with the sheets pulled over you, still in your REM phase - can you say yellow rubber?. 

The quietest tables were at the back of the boat far and away from the warm food. But I just love cold oatmeal with banana, raisins and strawberries if they’re in season (which they are but not on this tug boat), a dash of cinnamon and all of it drenched in non-fat milk.  They had 4 kinds of kiddy cereal and then muesli for adults.  Muesli is basically oatmeal which I love but it has a lot of fluff in it which I don’t care for. It’s over loaded with sugar first of all and has hard dried fruit and colon clogging nuts that I’d rather avoid – especially while traveling.  But I took a chance and tried a little bowl of muesli.  Not only was it everything I don’t like about muesli but it must have been a package that was opened 3 tours ago.  I mean – who eats cereal when you can have all this other stuff!  After the waiter finally brought me a spoon (I couldn’t find one – you’d think they be next to the cereal bowls or yogurt) my muesli was still bone dry floating on top of the milk.

But I understand why everybody was making a mountain of food.  Basically you had to pile up the food on your plate because half of it you couldn’t eat and by the time you made your way around all the food stations and find a table, you actually lost weight on this ship with all the walking, walking, walking.

 

I’ve always loved mosaics.  Santa brought me a few sets when I was a child.  I enjoyed putting all the small pieces in place and loved all those brightly colored things and blings that when glued into place, a beautiful picture would appear, begging to be looked at, studied and adored.  The indoor swimming pool was a 2 level deal all decked out in small tiny tiles that had me mesmerized.  The pool area was so beautiful; I really wanted to dive right in.  But with all those small children, I could only think that 3 quarters of the liquid in the pool is water.  All the yelling and screaming echoed like crazy and I could only stand it long enough to snap a hand full of pictures. I took many photos of the beautiful art work.  Here are 2 of them.  See the others on my shutterfly site when I up load them - I'll let you know.

  

Luckily we have small stomachs so it doesn’t take much discount food to fill us up.  After breakfast we walked around the upper decks to admire the ship and the views of the port that we are approaching. Passing through the pool area we ended up on this part of the deck where we can see the ship is getting closer to the port.

Marseille is a giant harbor filled with hundreds of yachts that according to one website I read are moored here because the people who own them, don’t really have the time to sail them.  Those damn rich people!  The history of Marseille is forever long so you can easily Google it for yourself to find all kinds of info about it. 

 

Take a look in the background and notice the church on the hill.  It is the main attraction of Marseille.  This is now my second time that I have missed the opportunity to visit such a beautiful church with intense details and amazing views.  Google “Notre Dame de la Garde” for a really special treat.

Before leaving from home, I Googled a “cool place to eat in Marseille”.  It turns out that the harbor’s edge is lined with shops and 100’s of cafés to choose from.  As I understood there is only one - maybe 2 - cafés that are not on the sidewalk level but one floor up.  I found some poorly written info about “the” café.  I had a name and a street but not an address.  We got in a taxi and I showed the taxi driver the name I had written down on a piece of paper, I said, “we want to go here.”  He drove us to the street but we had to figure out the address ourselves.  I new something was wrong because the street was actually the second street away from the water’s edge.  How can you have a view of the harbor if you’re on the second street away from the water? The taxi driver drove us through the first half of the street.  As Jens and I were walking the next half of the street, I explained to him that it’s a balcony café we are looking for.  So Jens looked up and pointed, “what about that place over there?”  “That must be it” I excitedly said, thinking we had found our French trésor.  All of the other balconies facing the harbor were attached to private apartments. Now how the heck do we get up there, I wondered. I thought this place must be so secretive and mysterious (like the French) that you probably enter through a back door with a special knock and the boss would look you over and then grudgingly and half heartily point you to the balcony on the front side of the building.   This is what we found.  Notice that there is only space for about 6 or 8 people.   We had a coffee, enjoyed the view and got a bit of sun on our faces.  It was wonderful.

After coffee we continued the rest of the way along the harbor until we came to the cross road where we switched back on the second street running parallel to the harbor. There were so many wonderful colored buildings that my camera was on over time.  Here are just a few shots and you can see more on my shutterfly site as soon as I up load them.  I’ll let you know.

Finally we made our way back to where we started from.  Before getting into a taxi we sat on a bench at the water’s edge and absorbed the last of the sights and scents of this wonderful and beautiful harbor city.

 

To get from ship to town you either have to take the expensive cruise bus or hire your own taxi.  Some people wanted to save money so they walked.  Or I should say they attempted to walk.  The taxi ride part of the way was on the highway for at least 10 to 12 minutes.  Just the walk from ship to the first public road outside of the port area is more than an adventurous walk.  And I haven’t even begun to explain yet about the walk from our cabin on deck 11 to the front door of the ship on deck 6.  I chide you not – it’s gotta be at least a mile or two.  Well that’s what it felt like.  Anyway by the time you tip your taxi driver the cruise bus was actually about 2 or 3 euro cheaper than the taxi but with the taxi you could come and go as you please and where you please and best of all – no children. 

But what was a real shocker is that when we pulled into port, Jens and I along with the other 3,000 guest - yes - 3,000 - all want off the boat at the same time.  And you don’t just get off the ship.  You actually have to stand in line and go through security.  They check your room key which has all your personal information coded in along with a picture of your face.  They actually scan all 3,000 cards and take a look at each face to see if they match.  And there is only 1 line off the boat.  THEN – you have to do it all over again to get back on the boat.  Jackets, cameras, bottled water, souvenirs on the x-ray belt and then you have to go through the scanner and have your face checked once again.

We realized then and there that this was not the vacation we signed up for.  OMG - we were going to have to do this in every port – twice!

Later that night after dinner, we went to the cigar lounge for some fresh for Jens and some peace of mind for me.  It’s the only place on the ship that there weren’t any children. At one time I really did have to tell a 12 year old boy to close the door.  Apparently his mommy didn’t want his daddy in the lounge.  The boy just looked confused at me and then I repeated, “Closei de doori !”  We had coffee in the cigar lounge and then at the very last minute just before curtain time, we made our way to the theater.  I had a big smile on my face when we approached the heavy theater doors.  Two men were hauling out the stupid ping-pong ball bingo machine.  Thank god we just missed the “enne ter-ti-tree-ah” (N33)   But our joy turned quickly to disappointment; no singing and dancing tonight in the theater.  I heard that these ships have a stage shows every night. Yeah – well – not tonight!   

So Jens decided to do his own song and dance entertainment in the casino.  He had the lead roll, front and center.  I was the back up gurl going boo hoo hoo every time the slot machine flashed – BAR BAR LEMON.