So today’s plan was to walk past the harbor, visit the fort overlooking the harbor entrance, retrace my steps back to board the subway, to the train station, hop on the Cassis train, make my way to the Cassis Harbor by bus or taxi, buy a boat ticket to visit the French Fjords, spend a couple hours on a boat, have a nice dinner there in Cassis, then back to Marseille. That was my hoped for adventure.
Early in the morning, near 8 AM, I’d already walked the couple miles from my apartment to the southern tip of the harbor. The Fort St. Nicolas complex is a fort built atop an outcropping overlooking the sea at the mouth of the Marseille Harbor. There’s a museum in the area too. I’d hoped to be able to tour the entire complex over a couple hours but when I walked up to the forts gate, a construction manager shooed me away, because they weren’t open yet. I could see lots of interesting stuff though. The construction manager had his office in an old rock carved room with a desk, drawing table strewn with drawings, a landline phone, a strangely anachronistic computer and printer, etc. I ask if I could go into the courtyard for pictures? Not for another year he tells me. I saw a sign to that effect just before entering the open main gate, but didn’t really pay attention. They do allow people to wander around the outer grounds of the fort, but not the inner section. Here’s a shot just after entering the main gate on the right, climbing those stairs and up the path to the main fort entrance.
And turning to the right a little. Entering the fort requires coming in a tunnel. Across the harbors opening, the other fort.
Here’s the only look I could get inside the main fort. The construction engineers office was just to my left in this picture. I did kind of accidently sneak by him at first but he spotted me and came out and stopped me from walking inside further. He did usher me into his office when I asked if he had a brochure of the fort (he did). Those electrical cables are for the remodeling crews power equipment and lights. There were guys up there out of view on the upper floors working.
After he shooed me away, turned around and got another shot of the entrance.
And across the harbor, the other fort. Gorgeous, huh? Notice that very large yacht in the water below right.
And as I’m walking back to the harbor and the metro station a look back up the hill.
Striking isn’t it? Sure would have been fun if I’d been able to tour the place. The museum didn’t open until 11 AM or so I didn’t get to visit there either. Another time maybe, I was still heading to Cassis today.
And after a 40 minute train ride, I was standing on the Cassis platform (below). The train came from that direction shown and was heading off behind me. This is a typical small country station where the official train arrival and departure hours aren’t really all that convenient for a tourist. I could not find any English speakers in the small group that deboarded the train with me, but I guessed that what appeared to be a bus stop sign was telling me the bus would get there at the train station several times a day, at 30 minute intervals. Sure enough, 20 minutes later, a nice city bus shows up and parks. Then we have to wait a while before heading down some snake-y and steep streets. Take a look at this map: Cassis. Zoom out a bit and you’ll see how far outside of Marseille it is.
Crazy winding streets. I’d seen that map already and wasn’t too keen on trying to make my way to Cassis by walking. All heading downhill from the train station though so I would have stumbled onto it eventually. I did reconsider walking after I got here but, no thanks, not today. The stuff I read said there were two or three local taxis that met the train, but today, none of them showed up before the bus. There were 3 young people who did hoof it, leaving shortly after the train arrived, but those of us in the bus passed them when they still had a mile or so to go.
The bus doesn’t even go into downtown Cassis. Streets are too narrow or something. It lets you off at the top of a street about 100 yards from the harbor. I did have the opportunity to investigate the menus of several restaurants on the way to the harbor though so the walk was productive. And here I am at the harbor plaza.
And a very nice beach. With sunbathers even.
Here’s the harbor proper with lots of boats.
That building on top the hill is a persons home. There were signs specifically forbidding tourists from going up there. Heh. Guess the owner didn’t like company.
Better view of that home on the hill, and, snicker, the Le Grand Large. Or in English, The Great Big.
And a topless sunbather.
That building with the big windows in the distance in the below picture is the ticket office where I’d gone to find a boat ride to the fjords. It was not to be. The staff told the 5-6 of us there that the boats weren’t operational today because of the possibility that the high winds (10-20 MPH that day) could swamp a boat and dump all the tourists. Seems as though the entrance to the fjords got pretty rough in the winds. Damnit! Well, anyway, Cassis is very nice small town and I enjoyed wandering around for a couple hours. Shirtsleeve weather. Wind inside Cassis wasn’t strong at all so not a bother. We had a gentle breeze with an occasional weak gust.
Back aboard the bus, passing a remote resturant…but I’d already had a snack in Cassis and really don’t know why I took this uninteresting and poorly composed picture. So, don’t look at it.
Now here, I took this on purpose to show typical farmland outside Cassis. 
And so, no visit to the fjords of France for me this day. When I got back to the harbor of Marseille, I quickly found the tour boats that did the calanques (fjords) tours both north and south of Marseille. Probably 4 large passenger boats, all tied up at the dock. But, guess what, all the ticket kiosks were closed with signs on them about the high wind problem so they weren’t running either. Gah!
Well, hell. I only had two days left in Marseille, so I spent them web surfing while wandering around looking at stuff, did some shopping and found a new 3€ umbrella to buy, hung out in different coffee bars in the afternoons, and real bars in the evenings. And yes, each day I did check if the boats to the fjords were running, but, no. No such luck.
I had finally decided where in Eastern Europe I wanted to go…Prague. Booked a week in a hostel, bought my airline ticket, and was all set to go. Weather in Prague looked very nice too. Thing about the trip to Prague was that I spend quite a while trying to find a train to take me there from Marseille. But, it was an 8 hour(!) train ride and cost 190€! And that was the fast train. The slower less expensive trains were overnighters arriving in Prague at the crack of dawn. The bus was even slower, but less expensive. Wow. I didn’t want to, but I checked the airlines and whoa, a one hour trip! And only 68€! Sign me up! (Turned out there was a 48€ tax on the ticket but even with that added it was still less than the train and much faster). So I bought a plane ticket.
I did take another boat trip out to If Castle because I just wanted to. Beautiful place to just sit on a bench overlooking the sea having a nice beverage while gazing across the ocean to Marseille. And I took another bus tour around a different section of Marseille. No pictures because I was over 1,000 on my memory card as it was so was cutting back.
So, there’s my trip to Marseille. A week in paradise. Very nice city. Had no problems whatsoever. Didn’t meet any bad guys or con artists. Perfect weather except for the wind blowing my boat tour plans out to sea. There was an early rain nearly every morning, but it was always perfect weather when I ventured out. Another place to come back to some day and spend even longer enjoying.