Marseille Day 2. Le Panier (Old Town)

Breakfast in the hotel was really good, and got the day off to a perfect start. Things went just a little downhill after that, though, since we'd forgotten that day was a National Day of Action in France, one of the effects being that the tram and metro services were curtailed (actually, we were rather amused to hear announcements which apologised for the fact that trains would only arrive at 10-minute intervals). Our normal tram service wasn't operating to to or from our hotel, so we had to go by tram instead, which was a much more convoluted journey.

The plan for the day was to take a boat trip to the Frioul islands, which is exactly what we did, first having braved the Day of Action demonstration. It was too late in the year to fit in Chateau d'If as well as the Frioul islands themselves, but it turned into a grand day anyway, and it was good to get away from the noise and the ugliness of Marseille itself.

We did a bit of a walk around the first of the islands, had a lunch stop, dangled our feet in the Mediterranean, and got the ferry back to Marseille around 3.00 pm, in plenty of time for a leisurely pastis in one of the bars at the harbour before going on to investigate Le Panier, the Old Town of Marseille. It's a confusing maze of narrow, hilly streets and little squares, a couple of which we stopped in. This was the fist of them, which, while full of atmosphere thanks to the children who were running riot there, didn't have a bar, so we didn't stay long. After a leisurely beer in the next square we came across, we went on back to the hotel for a siesta.

Our evening meal was on Cours Julien, which is a bit of a restaurant strip. We plumped for a place which offered Créole cooking. The menu was better than the reality, and the service was desperately slow. We missed the last tram (this closing at 11.00 really catches you out!) and it took us a while to get our bearings and find our way back to tram tracks. No bars on the way home, and the hotel bar was closed, so we watched the end of last night's movie on the TV in our room. A serious Man is great stuff!