La Merveille de Marseille... (1)

After a metro ride and a fairly decent walk, I got to my hostel. Success! It was even warm enough for me to be feeling quite hot by this stage. However, I was happy, because this was the view that greeted me as I approached the area I'd be staying in.



After a wifi fix, I thought it would be best to make the most of my time, and get out to see what looked to be a pretty sweet city (founded 2600 years ago, and France's second largest). The hostel had plenty of handy-dandy tourist maps, complete with lists of monuments, museums, etc to see. Given that I had a day and two halves in the place, I adopted a semi-organised approach, looked through the list, decided what I really wanted to see, and worked out which ones were close together.

Numéro uno on the list was Notre Dame de la Garde, the church perched on top of the hill in the middle of Marseille. I earnt a look through, too, as I walked up there from the Metro station.



Just a couple of facts about it to amaze you:
Altitude on the hill: 147.85m
Height of the massive statue of the Virgin holding Jesus: 9.72m
Weight of the statue: 9796kg
Weight of the Breat Bell: 8234kg

Also, it still bears bullet marks from Marseille's liberation on August 25, 1944, as it was the capture of this cathedral that liberated the city! The interior is super-detailed, there's gold everywhere, and lots of mosaics. The view over the city is as impressive as the cathedral, too.




For some reason, a wave of tiredness hit me at this point, so got on a bus and did the circuit which took me down to the Old Port (ie the centre of town).

After a while, I had recovered enough to see a couple more sights...

1. St Victor's Abbey: founded in the 5th Century, on a former quarry and medieval cemetery. Current church from the 13th Century
2. Palais du Pharo ('Pharo palace conference centre'): described by my map as "a genuine 'on the waterfront' building presented by Marseille to Napoleon III." However, I must admit that I found the views more inspiring than the building!

Headed back to home base on what would have been a very scenic bus route, had it still been light outside. Went for the easy option of buying dinner at the shop which was literally just around the corner from my hostel. Don't know what it is with me and kebab-shop guys when I'm on holiday, but this one was very chatty, even remembered me from when I had walked past with all my luggage earlier in the day (?), and finished by inviting me to come back the next night!