Marseille and Ventimiglia

Marseille

It’s big, it’s dirty - the dirtiest city we’ve been in I think - but it’s beautiful in the old port, where we are staying in a perfect spot, one street back from the port waterfront, about a 30 second walk away. 30 seconds in the other direction at a 90 degree angle is a main shopping street with little supermarkets, crepes, boulangeries, cafes and clothes shops.

At night our apartment is light and noisy – I have earplugs and wrap a scarf around my eyes.

I bought a white shirt at H&M.

We spent quite a few hours wandering around the ‘richly diverse’ narrow streets looking for an English language book-shop, as I’d finished my book. The first one, which was meant to have the best selection was no longer in existence. However, we finally found the second one and managed to get a Margaret Atwood I haven’t read - probably because I swore to give her a break after Oris and Crake which I didn’t really like much – so now have new reading material ‘After the Flood’, which I’m enjoying.

We took the hop on/off tourist bus to Notre Dame de la Garde - miles up on the hill but a truly stunning chapel/fortress combo. Saw all the other city sights – old forts built by Napolean to keep an eye on the populace, a palace built by the city and gifted to Napoleon and Josephine, but which they never visited (ungrateful sods, what a waste!!!) and further out some nice pebble beaches.


Ventimiglia

After a small incident involving Karen throwing away the train tickets she’d carefully put inside an info booklet she later decided was no longer needed, and Stephen scrambling in a street side bin looking for the rubbish bag we’d thrown out that morning, we set off to the railway station to buy new tickets to Ventimiglia.

We had to change trains twice, at Nice and then again at Monaco. To our relief this was very easy as each of the trains arrived at the platform right next to the one we’d just got off at! Brilliant!! They really have the train thing sussed here in Europe.

Ventimiglia is a small sea-side community, about a 20 min train ride from Monaco. We’d decided to come here because we wanted to break up our trip from Marseille to Cinque Terra, but Monaco, Nice and Genoa were all outrageously expensive.

I’m so glad we came here. It feels like a real holiday after all the busy enormous cities and even reminds me a wee bit of home, with it’s hills, greenery, and beach that looks back to the lights on the hill that are Monaco.

Our hotel was a short walk down the main street of town, then across the footbridge and along the waterfront. Our room is great and has its own little balcony where I’m sitting right now as I type.

We dropped our bags and then headed back across the bridge to the market we’d spotted, to buy cheese, tomatoes, salami, wine and bread - and we had dinner deliciously al fresco on the balcony, before heading for an evening promenade around the waterfront and admiring the stars and the city lights

Day 2, Sunday, we went for a walk up the hill to the old town – no looking in the church here, as there was a mass in progress – checked out the views, then wandered back and saw a herd of goats hanging out by the side of the river – came back across the footbridge and gave some of the bread we’d just bought to the ducks - then sat on the beach with our books for a couple of hours. Stephen had his first swim in the blue, blue Med – but as anyone who knows me will know – I didn’t go in.

I look forward to more of this in Rio Maggore!!