Girls Just Wanna Have Fun: In Marseille

Last week, I took a little girls trip to Marseille with my friends Val and Lillian.  Although the weather was not quite as ideal as we had hoped, we still saw some sunshine and a great time laughing and relaxing.

See all Marseille pictures here

Arriving to Marseille by Ouigo, the discount train, we were greeted with sun and blue skies!  After checking into our airbnb place we went in search of some food (note to self Ouigo trains don't sell food!). We spent the afternoon wandering and getting a feel for the city.  Our first thought was that there was an awful lot of graffiti but we soon realized that it was mostly just in the neighborhood we were staying in because it's artist area, or the "très cool" area, as our air bnb host put it.  We eventually made it to port area and Le pannier quarter which we decided we would need to check out again the next day when more things were open. 

After a little happy hour and chat chez nous, we stumbled upon a great Lebanese restaurant for dinner in our area. You'll notice two themes with our dinners these trips:  everything is so much cheaper than in Paris and we closed down the restaurant every night!

The next morning we woke up to blue skies and planned to make this our hiking day in the Calanques along the cost.  After packing our lunches and grabbing the metro to the bus, we exited the metro to find it was raining with more threatening clouds on the horizon.  Whomp, whomp...

A little rain won't ruin our day!

Changing plans, and clothes, we decided to explore the city instead.  We headed back to Le pannier quarter, which is called the Montmartre of Marseille because of the hills.  While not much more was open, I did enjoy the streets and bought myself some traditional Marseille soap.

After a picnic lunch in a garden overlooking the port, we hiked up the big hill to Notre Dame de la Garde. Despite some rain, the views were quite beautiful and the church itself had mosaics throughout.

After some coffee to wait out the rain, we headed back home for another little happy hour. This night we headed back toward the old port and at a delicious 3 course seafood dinner for so cheap!  We shared our appetizers, so we got to eat sardines (by accident but they were delicious) and bouillabaisse, the local fish soup.

The following day we woke to dreary rainy skies so we decided to take it easy. We slowly made our way to the beach front, stopping at the oldest bakery in Marseille for some navettes, the traditional pastry of the region.

The coast greeted us with extremely cold winds and rain so we quickly found a place to grab a coffee. (Notice a theme here?) The rain did clear up, and after a failed attempt to take a ferry to a nearby island we decided to do a little shopping, pastis tasting (local liqueur...not fans!), and enjoy the sun sitting on the port with some wine. 

Happy hour again followed and then dinner at a delicious little restaurant in our neighborhood--we all highly recommend!

Our last morning we got up early knowing the weather forecast was for sun and we wanted to get our hike in before our train in the afternoon. A short bus ride later and we were in the park. We had read that the trails were not clearly marked, and this was definitely the case but we got to our goal and had some stunning views of the Mediterranean! Great way to end the trip.

All in all a great trip. We found Marseille to be quite a bit different than Paris...it felt like nothing was open and if it was open, there were very people were in them (especially true for bars) but we weren't sure if this was just because it was school holidays. Regardless, it was a great city to relax in for a few days.

**Tips:  Hike the Calanques. We only went to Calanque du Sugiton, but I think there's lots more trails to be explored!  I would recommend eating in the Cours Julien area at least once...it has a completely different feel than the rest of Marseille and the food is delicious!