I didn’t really know what to expect of Marseille, but when planning our Europe 2023 trip, it was about 2 hours by train from Lyon. In French school, I feel like what I heard most about Marseille was how people there had a different French accent. It was like the equivalent of the Boston of France. While I didn’t notice any change in accent from the other French cities, I thought Marseille had some scenic views and way bigger than I thought.
HOW LONG SHOULD YOU STAY IN MARSEILLE?
Marseille felt much larger than Lyon, and it was more spread out along the coast. Old town was pretty small, but there was plenty do and see in the rest of the city. Marseille is also known for its national park, Parc national des calanques. “Calanque” just means “cove,” and there are several (potentially expensive) boat tours that will take you from old town to the park. We did not bring hiking clothes/shoes, so we did not plan to go the park, but I would recommend doing it. I think we did everything we wanted to do in 2 days, but if you have time, 3-4 days would be ideal to go the national park.
WHERE SHOULD YOU STAY IN MARSEILLE?
Unless you have a particular reason to stay in another area, I’d stay near the main old town port area, aptly called “Vieux Port” (old port). You can see a map of everywhere we went below.
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION IN MARSEILLE (JUNE 2023)
I highly recommend getting a public transit card. You can use it to ride any form of public transportation, which makes it super easy to get around Marseille which is way bigger than you think. We each got a 24-hour pass for 5.5€ and used it for 8 rides, so we definitely got good use out of it.
To get a bus card, you can either buy one on the bus (cash only as of June 2023), or you can buy one at a rare bus stop that has a ticket machine. The easiest way is to buy one from a tobacco shop, which there are plenty near the Vieux Port. The shops will often have a sticker on the front or a sign that says “RTM,” which is the transportation company.
We took the metro, tram, and bus. I have to say this city seemed to have the most conveniently placed metro/bus/tram stops, but the metro doesn’t have good air conditioning. The tram looked the newest and was my favorite mode of transportation. The bus stop locations were very convenient, but the buses didn’t accept Apple Pay.
IMPORTANT FRENCH VOCABULARY:
English was less common in Marseille than Paris, but you’d still get by in restaurants.
- Anglais = English language
- La note = the bill at a restaurant
- Le ticket = the receipt at a store
- Les toilettes = the bathroom
- Carte banquaire (abbreviated to C.B.) = credit card, can have a minimum purchase amount to use at small convenience stores, but not usually at bakeries when you’re buying a croissant
- Carafe d’eau = carafe of tap water for the table
- L’eau plat = flat water, non-sparkling
- L’eau gazeuse = sparkling water
DAY 1: SUNDAY, JUNE 4
Taking the train from Lyon to Marseille
We Ubered to the train station and got there at 7am. I just was not going to have a London tube situation again where we thought the tube would be open early in the morning (granted that was 4am), but the buses were indeed running at 6am in Lyon.
We arrived at Lyon Part-Dieu in like 15 minutes. The train station wasn’t as nice as Paris and you do have to pay 1 euro to use the bathroom, but they accept Apple Pay and the bathrooms were really clean. The train station’s TV screens didn’t show which track our train was going to be on until 10-15 minutes before our train was supposed to arrive. Our train was scheduled to leave at 8:05, so I think arriving 7:30-7:40am would’ve been fine, but what can I say I have travel anxiety and had no backup plan for missing any of our transportation.
We arrived at the train station and you could see the big church on the hill from the deck. We walked to our Airbnb, which was a little bit further than I wanted, but it was mostly downhill. Our Airbnb was in a really great location near the Old Port, just one street away. One thing to note is to watch your step in Marseille because I guess people just don’t really clean up after their dogs.
We were able to drop our bags off early, and then we walked along the main promenade. The port was really beautiful. Marseille felt pretty touristy, but there were noticeably more French tourists, not so many international tour groups. It was here where a French grandmother asked me where I got my knee brace lol. There was a little hop-on hop-off train, Le Petit Train Marseille, that was very popular, but cost 8 euros roundtrip per loop. There were two different routes that hit the main tourist destinations and the trains looked to come pretty frequently, but I’d definitely recommend taking public transportation because it’s way cheaper and it takes you all over the city.
Marseille is a coastal town and is known for seafood like shrimp, mussels, and bouillabaisse, but we didn’t really really want to eat heavy seafood. Most of the touristy spots along the port were seafood restaurants and kind of expensive. I had researched a vegetarian place called Hododa, so we went there. It was very small and had very few tables. We beat the lunch rush, as they started turning people away if they didn’t have a reservation. My prix fixe came with a juice, a whole plate of veggies, a melon sauce, and a dessert, so I got a little lemon cake but it was kind of dry. Sarah got a cauliflower toast with a side salad.
Clouds were coming in as we walked around the shops after lunch, and soon it started to rain. We went to a Starbucks to get on wifi and waited until we could check into the Airbnb.
After we checked in, it was still raining and we didn’t have tickets purchased on timed reservations, so we decided to just hang out in the Airbnb for a bit. This was the first Airbnb with a TV which was exciting. We watched a Danish movie on Netflix called A Beautiful Life about a fisherman who becomes a famous singer.
Around 3:30 pm, the rain had stopped and walked back through the Vieux Port. We stopped at an overlook called the Mirador de Saint-Jean. It had a great view of the port and the bigger church on the hill, called Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde. It was so sunny and nice and hard to believe it was dark and gloomy an hour earlier.
We decided to go to one of the big churches in the city, Cathédrale La Major, which was free to enter. It’s huge and striped, you cannot miss it. From there, looking up the coast to the west, Marseille looked like a crowded manufacturing downtown with barges along the water. Down the coast to the east, there were nice beaches that would lead to the national park.
After, we walked into the Le Panier neighborhood, which is known for its narrow streets and colorful street art. We grabbed some ice cream from Glaces Le Chamo. Then, we walked down to Mucem and saw the water. The museum covers European and Mediterranean civilizations, but we didn’t feel like getting tickets.
Then, we took the bus to Vallon des Auffres, a little cove and marina with fishing boats and some restaurants. We didn’t know how to buy a bus ticket, so we were hoping there was an Apple Pay tap station on the bus, but there wasn’t. Luckily, no one was checking tickets, and we entered with a bunch of other tourists.
It was starting to get cloudy again, but the rain held off. We walked along the main street, which went along some shops and we were looking to get back to the water. We took this little side street in a little neighborhood and got to a small, rocky, secluded beach called Plage de Madormé. From there, we could see down the coast and even saw a little ferris wheel.
We decided to head back to the Airbnb and just grab something quick for dinner. I had originally made a dinner appointment at Chez Jeannot, a pizza place at Vallon des Auffres, but had cancelled it earlier that day because of the rain.
We wanted to take the bus back to Vieux Port, but we still didn’t have a ticket. We asked a woman at the bus stop if we could buy tickets on the bus, but she said we had to pay cash only. When the bus came to the stop, we double-checked with the driver and he confirmed he didn’t take credit card/Apple Pay. We actually did not take out any Euros during our time in France, so we walked about a mile to the closest open cigarette shop/corner store and purchased two 24-hour bus tickets, and rode the bus back.
It started to rain again. We grabbed water at Starbucks before it closed, then got some Thai food to go from Pitaya across the street. We ate our dinner around 7:30pm at the Airbnb while watching Love & Gelato on Netflix, which was a silly little coming-of-age romcom, but a fun little travel movie.
DAY 2: MONDAY, JUNE 25
While we didn’t book a boat tour to the Parc national des calanques, we did book a boat tour to the small island of Frioul from Get Your Guide. I wasn’t sure if it was legit, but it was only like $55 per person. We showed up at the meeting point at the docks near Mucem at the designated time on the ticket, but we didn’t see the boat and no one else was around at 8:45am in the morning. I called the company and the woman sent photos of the actual boat we should be looking for. A man finally pulled up at 8:55am for our 9am tour.
He said there was supposed to be one other passenger, so we waited for him. When he came, he was running and out of breath since his Uber dropped him off at the wrong place. He was a math professor who was in town for a conference and he didn’t speak any French.
The boat went around to Vallon des Auffres, then it went past Chateau D’If, the fortress on a little island. It’s famous for being the prison that Count of Monte Cristo escaped from. Some tours take you to debark and tour the castle, but ours just went around it and docked at the nearby island of Frioul.
Our tour guide/boat captain told us that he could take us to a second location and see a calanque afterwards if we wanted to cut our time short in Frioul. There was a little miscommunication in that we thought he was going to take us to the national park, so we all agreed to only spend a little over an hour on Frioul.
Sarah and I walked over to the little strip of restaurants, while the other man went to go hike. We walked over to see a little cove and then quickly got crêpes at Le Dauphin.
We met back on the boat and he proceeded to take us to this little cove nearby. The idea was just to sit and relax on the boat for the rest of the tour. The other passenger was not happy about it. He wanted to spend three hours hiking and he wanted to go back to Frioul. He didn’t want to waste his time and was getting all heated. The tour guide was annoyed with him since he arrived late and he didn’t understand the laidback culture of Marseille. We didn’t really have enough time to go back to Frioul, so the captain agreed to just take the long scenic route back to Mucem.
Next, we took the bus up to Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde, the church at the top of the hill that we could see down from the port. This church also had free admission, so we love that. The views of the city were beautiful! The weather was perfect and the water was so blue. It was pretty crowded, and the inside of the church wasn’t anything that special, but it’s definitely worth going to.
We took the bus down the hill back to Vieux Port, then we took the metro to another vegetarian cafe I found called Eclectique Marseille. They were only serving 2 options for lunch, so we got a lentil salad and some lemonade. There was plenty of seating outside, and a lot of people had laptops and were doing work. I’m sure there must be more good restaurants closer to the Vieux Port, but it was hard to research since Yelp isn’t a really big thing in France.
Then we walked up the street to Palais Longchamp, which had a museum and park. The museum wasn’t open that day, but the exterior architecture was very cool. We walked up to the park, but there wasn’t much to it and there was no shade, so we decided to leave. We took the tram, which was very modern-looking.
We took the tram to the Panier neighborhood to get ice cream at a place Sarah found called Vanille Noire. We shared 3 scoops that surprisingly worked well together: black vanilla, grapefruit, and coffee.
We took the bus and walked to Porte D’Aix, kind of like the Arc de triomphe. Then, we took the metro and the bus to go down the coast to the ferris wheel we had seen the previous day, le grand roue Escale Borely. The beach. Plages du Prado, was so lovely and not too crowded, so we just sat by the sand for a while. There were several casual restaurants beach bars nearby with comfy beach chairs that looked like a good option if you wanted to sit and have a drink.
For dinner, we took the bus back to Vieux Port. We still weren’t looking for seafood, and we stumbled across a food hall! Les Grandes Halles du Vieux Port was an aesthetic food hall with a dozen stalls with all different kinds of food. We ended up getting Lebanese food, which was just alright. There were plenty of tables outside and an area where people were mostly just drinking.
We went back through the tourist shops, most of which were closed for the evening, but Sarah found some soaps. We went to a tobacco shop and I found a magnet and we picked up some waters. Then, we went back to the Airbnb and watched Our Souls at Night on Netflix.
DAY 3: TUESDAY, JUNE 6
Taking the train from Marseille to Nice
We left our Airbnb a little before 7:30am and took the metro to the train station since walking would have been all uphill. There weren’t a ton of food options here, so Sarah and I just ate a granola bar that I brought. We didn’t get to the train station too early and all went well and we took the 8:28am train to Nice.
Overall, I thought Marseille was very pretty. I think it’s a much bigger city than I thought it was going to be and could probably find more things to do if I had more time to research. I would go back to see the national park, but I’m glad we didn’t go on this trip since the weather was so finicky.
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Views at Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde
- Sitting by the water at the Plages du Prado
WHAT I WOULD’VE CHANGED:
- take the tram up to Palais Longchamp
- find better food places
- Not go on a Sunday/Monday since a lot of places are closed
- brought a beach towel to the beach
- allowed extra time to go to the national park
OTHER EUROPE 2023 BLOG POSTS:
3 Days in London
4th Timer’s Guide to Paris
2 Days in Lyon
Pin it: 2 Days in Marseille
