Just Keep Walking

One of the first things I learnt about Marseille, apart from how glorious the weather is, and how appealing the water looks (the grapevine suggested that Melbourne may be providing somewhere in the region of 11 degrees max) is that the budget does not extend to provision of public seating to any level one would expect. Especially so, if that expectant were of the tourist species.

Whilst in the second or third stage of being local map reading-challenged, yours truly managed to walk in the direction that I stubbornly believed would be what the compass would advise (should I have one of those things), for around 2 kilometres before something resembling a seat was used to park me while I confirmed that indeed my status of not being where I should was now compounded by some 2 kilometres.

One place where there are some seats is at the underground Metro stations, and from where I now found myself a train was the most useful tool. The other tool present was me and not so useful. Using my IPad Maps App - wow what a great idea. Planning and thinking. Hope I have those two sorted out or I won't make it out of France and into England for the next tennis stage of my trip.

Then again I could stay here - it's raining on and off in London - I could always do the tennis by remote control. Nah - where's the joy in not being able to say you have experienced Wimbledon rain and a little tennis in between?

Last night was a change in pace though from Paris - sitting by the water, drink in hand, nothing on my mind except - no I was right nothing - watching 10-12 locals with a fishing line dropped in the water (one each) determined to catch something, fish preferably, accompanied I believe by someone else's choice, by a lone dog whose determination in seeing that no fish were caught was more successful.

Today I was ready to hit the water, and with so many boats in port I took it upon myself to ensure that one would take me as ordered, for a price. With control of this vessel, my demands were simple - take me and the rest of these people here on a 3 hour tour (then I quickly checked that the SS Minnow was not painted on the side) so I may finally see the Calanques between Marseille and Cassis, of which I'd been aware for at least a few months now.

Well they certainly were impressive in their rockiness but among the million shots that I took between nearly losing my camera overboard a few times the most impressive thing that I noticed, and we were navigated pretty darn close to these things, was the variation in trees and shrubs associated with rock formations that may be only short distances apart. Then of course there were the caves formed in a number of the Calanques - another time it would be tremendous to take a land tour and gain a different perspective.

For an afternoon thrill I decided to deny my feet the opportunity of resting and walked all the way to Notre-Dame de la Garde, which is so my Catholic sources tell me a minor basilica, which leads me to wonder what something major would look like, cause this is impressive. Although not traditionally "old" in the sense that it is a nineteenth century replacement for a church originally constructed centuries earlier, it is something to take in, maybe two visits worth. The standout feature, is a bell tower which is sat atop by an 11 metre plus copper statue of Madonna and Child (guilded with gold leaf)

The walk to the basilica was mostly up because at something like 150 metres it sits on the highest natural point in Marseille. It can be truthfully said then that I was high in Southern France because of the Catholic Church.