Southern France Part I: the cities
Trip dates: February 5, 2017 - February 10, 2017
We spent almost a week in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur area in southern France, anchoring ourselves in the cities of Marseille and Antibes. If I could do it again (OK, when, not if), I'd do it as a road trip so that we can stop at the numerous little towns in the area as well as the numerous national parks, and do more hikes and such.
We arrived in Marseille, the second largest city in France, via a scenic train ride from Carcassonne. There were times where I thought we were back in New Zealand (think rolling green hills, sheep, and mountains in the distance). The scenery changed drastically upon arriving at the train station; there were people everywhere and lots of loiterers. The city definitely felt a lot grittier and dirtier than even Paris; there were times walking around where we felt like we were in Istanbul rather than being in France.
We stayed two nights in Marseille, but just spent the one afternoon exploring the city, mostly around the old port area. We did a day trip the other day, but more on that in the next post.
Marseille as a city was not our favorite, it was way too urban and didn't feel quite as comfortable for walking around. The location of the city is great though, being a port city along the water and in close proximity to some beautiful scenery. We caught an amazing sunset from the Cathédrale La Major our first night, where the sky turned brilliant shades of red and orange. There weren't any other people around really, which makes me think this was probably a fairly common sight there?
One of the things that Marseille is known for is bouillabaisse. Eric and I have had this previously, but it was nothing like what we had in Marseille! Since the city is known for this dish, there are tons of restaurants that serve it. So much so that a bouillabaisse charter was created to preserve the traditions of this classic dish and to help separate the touristy places from the authentic ones. Or maybe it's all a ploy to get tourists, who knows? Either way, we went to a restaurant that's part of the charter: Le Ruhl.
Some things we learned about eating bouillabaisse:
- It's a fishermen's dish consisting of trash fish, aka the fish caught that aren't sellable (we had just watched the trash fish episode from the latest season of Top Chef, so perfect timing!)
- The trash fish in your bouillabaisse is presented to you, and then filleted on a side table for you. Ours included John Dory, conger eel, scorpion fish, sand crab, and some others that I forget.
- They serve the seafood on a separate plate from your bowl of soup, along with croutons and a pimento mayo. You then eat it by putting pimento mayo on the crouton, dipping it in the soup and eating it as a bite with the fish. It sounded a bit weird, especially the pimento part, but it was really delicious!
- The broth is surprisingly heavy and has a very deep flavor, similar to the texture of a tonkotsu ramen broth but with fish instead. You get refills of soup (so that it's always nice and hot) so it gets filling really quickly!
- You get a bib when served bouillabaisse
After two days in Marseille, we made our way east along the coast to Antibes. It's a small town on the French Riviera, between Cannes and Nice, so you get the same views but with less people and cheaper! Antibes feels like a beachy resort town but with a much chiller, somewhat more local, low-key vibe (whereas Nice seemed like Waikiki when we passed through). The coast was pretty, but since it was cloudy most of the time we were there, the water wasn't as azure and pretty as we imagined.
There wasn't a lot to see or do here so we ended up doing some more day trips. We went to the Gorges du Verdon one day (see the next post) and we went to Monaco the other day. We had originally planned to just stop over in Monaco on our way out of France to Italy, but turns out there's no left luggage in Monaco so day trip it is!
The train to/from Monaco runs along the Riviera and it was pretty crowded, seems like there might be a lot of commuters? When we got to Monaco, we realized that Project Fi doesn't work here! We got a map from the train station and then managed to make our way to the Rock where the Prince's Palace is. Unfortunately for us, the Palace was closed for the season until April or so. We ended up just walking around a bit and grabbing a bite to eat before making our way down to the famous Casino Monte Carlo.
We saw some fancy cars outside the Casino, including some Bentleys, Maseratis, and Rolls Royces, but not nearly as many as we expected and nothing super expensive/rare. There were a lot more BMWs and Audis than anything else. We had read online that it costs 10 euro to go inside the Casino just to check it out, so we made our way across the street to the Cafe de Paris Casino with the goal of winning our admission cost. Eric and I ended up playing video table games (blackjack, roulette and craps) and we never made it into the actual casino. The video table games was too much like playing with fake money, that's why Eric lost it all right? [Eric: no I didn't!] I managed to come up on top by a whole 3 euro (after being all the way down to 6 euro) so not a shabby way to spend a few hours but there aren't any free drinks like in Vegas.
Monaco was nice to visit but you definitely only need a couple hours there, unless you're super baller baller. The yachts that we saw there were ridiculous, btw - probably cost more than most people's homes! The country was very clean and we saw police everywhere so it seemed very safe. Everything definitely seemed richer there, I felt like even the air smelled richer from the moment we stepped out of the train station. It's also really really hilly there so you can get a great workout just from walking around! [Eric: it seems like only the poor, or well normal, people walk around!] Monaco is a good day trip destination and, if you're there in the warmer months, hope you have a rich friend that'll take you on their yacht! :)
And like the endings of all our other posts, here's a random assortment of food that we ate in Marseille and Antibes.
