Pen-Slinger

Monday, March 25, 2019

Marseilles - Notre Dame de la Garde

Continuing my series of posts on our Marseilles trip... this week, Notre Dame de la Garde. This is the city's most prominent land mark - you can't miss it. Anywhere you are in the city, you can see it towering above you. A bit like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Here it is, viewed from a distance between a line of boats at the Vieux Port (old port)...

It is a 19th Century basilica mounted atop a limestone hill called, naturally enough, la Garde. For the busy tourist, there are tourist buses that take you all the way to the top. But the real pilgrim treks his way up. Now Blandine is a devout Catholic and I love trekking up hills, and neither of us were in a particular hurry, so naturally we did it the hard way. As a compensation , you get a grand view of Marseilles and the seas surrounding it, as you climb. Here is a closer view as we neared it...

Monday, March 18, 2019

Marseilles Trip 2 - Îles du Frioul

Part2 of my post on our Marseilles trip. After IF island, the ferry took us to the Frioul Archipelago, a group of four interconnected islands. The boat lands you on the port of Ratonneau island. It has tiny village about a hundred inhabitants, all of whom seem to be restaurateurs - it is chock a block with touristy restaurants and ice cream parlors. It is only when you see it from a distance that you realize how pretty it is. We decided to give it a miss and head for the island of Pomègues, to which it is connected by a dyke. A decision I regretted later because, despite the port area looking like a tourist trap, it has its own attractions, not least a historic fort that dates back to Roman times. Pomègues by contrast is completely uninhabited. It is a long thin finger of delicious chalky cliffs, romantic bays and lagoons and scrubby vegetation. Blandine and I trekked all the way to the tip and plonked ourself down on a rock shoal under an overhanging cliff and watched the Mediterranean swirling and crashing on the rocks. Until it was time to head back to the ferry...