Marseille

On Monday, Isabelle and Yann took me to see Marseille! The day was cloudy and overcast for the morning, but it cleared up a bit later in the day and actually became quite warm.

It's hard to see because of the clouds and the contrast, but that huge statue on top of the church is a golden statue of Mary holding the baby Jesus. In this photo it's a little hard to see the size, but it's really enormous. 

Do you see that little island out there in the middle? That's the Chateau d'If! For some silly reason I never thought that the Chateau d'If was a real place. It's been living in my head as a fabrication of Dumas, but it's a real thing that you can go see. How cool is that?

When we went into the Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde I was caught off guard by the breathtaking, golden mosaics on the domes. I couldn't keep my eyes off of the ceiling the whole time. There were also boats hanging from the ceiling since the church is named after Notre-Dame de la Garde who is supposed to guard the costal city.

The walls were covered in paintings of the sea and boats. Underneath and all over the building inside and out there were hundreds of plaques with thanksgivings to Notre Dame de la Garde who had answered prayers.

The prettiest of the mosaics was at the front above the statue of Mary. 

There were also mosaics of the annunciation and angels. If you're tired of golden mosaics, feel free to skip ahead.

One more view. Okay, I promise I'm done with the mosaics.

Despite, the cloudy weather, the view over Marseille was beautiful.

We were happy tourists for the day. Every time Yann complained about American tourists, I just complained about the Vietnamese tourists. We're such a politically correct family.

After seeing the basilica Notre-Dame de la Garde, we went down to the centre ville to get lunch.  We walked by the Vieux Port, but it was necessary to walk a bit away from the docks to get to a restaurant that wasn't touristy. The restaurant that we chose was suggested to Yann by his Harley-Davidson friend since his girlfriend works there. It was quite good and very reasonably priced. 

Then we walked back to the Vieux Port and crossed on a ferry to the other side. The trip over was short, but pretty since we went between all the boats lined up in the docks.

I took so many pictures of boats on that ride, but had to settle on one to show you, so here is my favorite! Maybe I'll make a watercolor of it.

Just kidding, one more boat picture from the other side.

While walking down the docks on the other side on our way to the museum, I was struck by this view of the fishing nets with Notre-Dame de la Garde way off on the mountain, perfectly situated between the masts of the boats.

On our way to the museum, we also saw this very old church. We tried to go inside, but it was closed because it was Monday.

From the museum, which was high above the water, we could see far out.

We tried to see the Marseille Cathedral as well, but it's closed on Mondays. The outside was quite impressive enough as it was.

After seeing the museum, which contained many Mediterranean artifacts, we moved on to "Les Docks" which is a shopping center in Marseille. It overlooks the docks and many people come there simply for the view. (People like us!) 

We saw people running way out there on the wall and to the right are the cruise ships that were getting ready to leave. 

The cruise ships looked nice in front of the one tall office building in Marseille. 

The sun was setting when we finally headed back to the car.  We had walked very far to go to the Docks, but we had the good chance to catch a bus on the way back so that it wouldn't take quite as long. To our good fortune, he didn't have any change so we got a free bus ride back. We stopped at the Irish pub that is managed by one of Yann's friends for drinks and then headed home.