Marseille and the cows

Our last port of call was Marseille, France on Thursday, July 26th. This was probably our least favorite port of call and had we not already pre-purchased a Disney Excursion we would have stayed onboard the ship. For those cruiser's still trying to decide about Marseille excursions, save your money and do it on your own. When you get off the Magic, there is a free shuttle bus into the center of town near the "vieux port". Once there, you can pay 5 euro per person and take the "little train" for a complete sightseeing overview of Marseille and it includes a trip up to see the Basillica du Notre Dame. You will avoid a lot of the hassles that the tour busses encounter trying to drive up these narrow mountain roads. Then you can spend however much longer you want to in the city center, returning to the ship at your leisure.

But, we did do the tour, and so boarded the bus at 8:15 in the morning. I do have to say, the drive up to the Basillica du Notre Dame was interesting, watching our driver manuever these narrow roads with traffic coming around the hairpin turns and screeching on their brakes. Once at the top, we had 200 steps to climb in order to reach the actual church. 200 steps by this time in the cruise was a piece of cake. After using the steps instead of the elevator whereever we went on the ship, plus all the walking and climbing on the excursions, our legs no longer felt the pain. Yeah! The Basillica is beautiful inside and was interesting to view on the outside, as it has been refurbished recently but one side of the church was left in its post-war state with pock marks all over it from the bombings. The view of Marseille and the old port was fascinating too.

As the title of this post indicates, Marseille is having one of those festivals where charities decorate a cow statue and then at the end of the festival they are auctioned off. Believe it or not, searching for cow statues became the goal of a number of us on the tour bus, and the highlight of the tour. We had about 1 hour to spend looking for cows or shopping after a complimentary beverage at a local cafe.

We were back at the ship by 12:30PM and just relaxed the rest of the afternoon and evening before attending the evening show. More on the ship and entertainment etc. tomorrow.

Sandy