Marseille day 2

A long walk up the Canebière - Marseille's main street - to start the day, with a detour into the market.  This used to be the main street, anyway - I don't know if there's now a mainer one, because this is fairly run down (though no less interesting for that).  In the C19th it was notorious for the sewage that would run down it: it's still whiffy.

The Grand Hotel is very grand - Wagner stayed there (there's a plaque).  On the other hand, it's been closed since 1979.

Some great glimpses up side streets.  Every time I ask it for directions, Google Maps ominously says "steep hills."  I live on a Steep Hill.  These are mild inclines.

I thought that the facade of Tacussel, booksellers and publishers, was much older than it is - it was designed in the 1960s.

Eventually, at the top of another street, I emerged at the    which was rather magnificent -

unlike the Musée des Beaux Arts, which was in the left hand part of it.  I didn't think I'd ever meet a C19th art collection I didn't want to spend hours in, but I met my match, today.  The two highlights were the frescoes by Puvis de Chavannes at the top of the stairs;

an 1853 view of Marseille by Emile Loubon,

which shows it as it's switching gears and developing into a big city - I love the juxtaposition of oxen horns with chimneys.  But this really brings home how before then, it was little more than a port and a market center.

And then a view of the Artist's Studio - maybe the 1880s? - by Joseph Garibaldi (no relation), which pretty much shows the view from where I'm sitting.

However, that was pretty much it.  There's a huge Courbet of a stag, that badly needs cleaning; an ok Daubigny, and everything else is "by a pupil of" and very derivative, or just plain uninteresting.  Not a snail or a dandelion in sight.  And the earlier period rooms were mysteriously closed.  So I was glad to escape briefly to the park behind, which was busily being rewilded.

In the afternoon, a really great boat trip to the Calanques, a large and beautiful national park between here - or Toulon, really - and Cassis (Cassis looked very pretty).

Two pics will have to sum it up in its wildness.

And then a bonus set of views coming back into the harbor.

And that's a wrap.