I’m not sure that two days was enough time to explore properly; three would’ve been better. That said, we had a great weekend, saw plenty of pretty things, and enjoyed being somewhere different.
This morning we got up early and took the 81 bus to the station in time for one last breakfast at the Café de France opposite the Gare Saint-Charles. This morning’s croissants were much fresher and consequently rated a nine, and the freshly-squeezed orange juice was a glassful of Maghrebin morning goodness. We didn’t rate the coffee cups because they had silly handles, but it didn’t matter. Our man was not there, but his colleague took great care of us.
We decided not to run up the steps to the Intercités to Bordeaux which was, somewhat spitefully, on the platform adjacent to a train to Miramas. We managed to resist boarding that and instead had a mostly uneventful but spectacularly pretty journey. I had booked us to sit on the north side of the train so we settled down to watch the scenery, and the Massif Central, slide by. The train was quite busy, so it wasn’t acceptable to leap up and down to get photographs from the other side, but companion pointed out I’d done that on Friday and intimated t might be better for me to sit down and let her sleep instead.
The train was delayed by about fifteen minutes thanks to an abandoned package at Nîmes, but we still had time to work our way through the contents of the cool-bag and consume a couple of coffees. There was a discussion about whether a tablecloth or some kind of non-slip mat would be a useful addition to the next journey to make the dining an even more outrageous — and spill-free — experience. We had Rum Baba for pudding. Some Cognac would’ve hit the spot.
I had a quiet game of Church or Mountain as we trundled through the countryside, and somewhere around Castelnaudary (where real cassoulet comes from, apparently) became intrigued by the number level crossings that seem to cross single roads that lead to and end at private properties.
After an uneventful change in Bordeaux — with time to sit in the sun — we boarded the TGV to Angoulême.
If you speak to Parisians about Marseille they’ll almost certainly tell you all sorts of horror stories about it with a special kind of vehemence, whereas the Marseillais seem sympathetic to the plight of the Parigos who live in vile conditions for about six months of the year and can’t go to the beach. I said to our Airbnb host that Marseille is warm, clean, cheap, and seemingly devoid of dogshit, so it’s no surprise the Parisians hate it.
Companion was also impressed by the make-up removal test which Marseille passed with flying colours. If you don’t have to remove make-up, the nose-picking test will yield similar results.
Of course, it’s easy to love it after only 48 hours in a teeshirt in November when you don’t move much further than the first, fourth, fifth and sixth arrondissements and don’t have to deal with the métro on a daily basis during rush-hour. It’s also unfair to try to compare the two as they are so clearly very different, yet the locals do it all the time.
It looks as if there’ll be another visit in the spring when the days are longer and we have more time to do things.
