Marseilles

The delightful thing about travelling with Lyn is that she is likely to get the most pleasure from a local bus ride or an ice cream. She will happily bundle around cathedral's and museums but the joy appears randomly.

We caught the train to Marseilles and then a taxi to the old port to meet our walking tour. The port had a few more boats than Kiama.

We walked from there up to the Le Panier district. It is named for the baskets lowered from the upper story windows of brothels with keys - or so the story goes.

Deftly dodging dog poo, we visited a shop selling the distinctive local olive oil based soaps.

Lyn was taken by the alley gardens with inspirational quotes. To my left it says, "If everything looks grey, move your elephant!"

A highlight of the whole district was the street art.

At one photo stop we got an insight into how crumbling buildings get fixed around here.

This is what they built for the homeless in Marseilles many moons ago.

Next stop was the cathedral. It was very impressive. The locals nicknamed it The Pyjamas. 

Returning to the waterfront, some of the modern museums are architecturally amazing.

We enjoyed harbour views from one of the port's huge old forts. Then ate a great lunch on top of the Mucem building.

With the limited time we had before our train we checked out the Museum of Marseilles. There were the remains of ancient boats and a whole graveyard. 

Apart from all the usual museumy stuff, there was a whole section on the history of petanque!

We then found an ice cream shop. Excellent! We found a local bus to take us the the railway station - much to Lyn's delight. The local train took us back to Aix. This is a well-off city but the train ticket inspectors are flanked by two railway police each!