Marseille*

This morning the cruise ship pulled into Marseille, or more accurately, into the Port of Marseille, which is as close to Marseille as Fremantle is to Perth. Unlike Fremantle, the Port of Marseille isn’t charming and interesting in its own right: it’s just a modern port, dotted with cranes and shipping containers and not much else.

For a price (naturalemente), MSC will shuttle passengers into the centre of Marseille, but apparently Marseille itself is also not charming or interesting. I looked up a list of Things To Do in Marseille from The Times, and three items on the very limited list were, “Eat some local food”, “Go to the beach”, and “Find some local graffiti art and look at it.” Let’s be honest; the same could be said of any coastal city on the planet. And even the upbeat Times article found it necessary to mention that, although ancient and historically important, Marseille hasn’t been well-cared for and can appear grubby and poorly-maintained to the discerning visitor.

So, couple all of that with my hatred of the French that has been simmering all week, like a reheated stew in the Buffet, and I decided to simply have a day on the ship. I’m still tired and sniffly from my cold, and I used the time to nap, update my travel journal, and do a load of ghetto laundry.

In the evening, I saw a show in the ship’s main theatre; a loud, high-energy salute to Broadway. The show tunes were good and the singers mostly competent, although none of them were native English speakers and the very precise lyrics of ‘America’ from West Side Story or ‘Prima Donna’ from Phantom of the Opera were a little too much for them.

Not that the audience cared. The boyfriend sitting in front of me, who’d clearly been dragged there by his girlfriend, was scrolling Instagram the entire time. The elderly British couple behind me, meanwhile, provided each other with a commentary track throughout – ironically the husband’s most salient contribution was that the sound quality he was talking over wasn’t very good.

The near-deafening soundtrack was there for a reason, sir.