The French Riviera: Marseille and Nice

Marseille

We finally visited a city and we really just did not like. I guess it would be naïve to think that we would like every city we visited but I did expect to really thoroughly dislike Marseille. We arrived really late at night and though that maybe the city was just a little dodgy by night but by the light of day we realised that it is in fact just a rather grim, grimy and unclean city. There were lots of shops closed and about 90% of them were covered in graffiti, the street was covered in litter, mostly broken glass and bottles and there were creepy, dodgy people everywhere and the smell of urine never went away. I wouldn’t say we felt entirely unsafe but I was definitely keeping my valuables close because this was the most we had ever felt like we would be getting pick pocketed.

While it wasn’t really our idea of a great place to visit we did still manage to get out and see some things. We jumped on a boat, which cost us a lot and was hot, stuffy and completely overcrowded… It took us to the Chateau D’If, located on an island off the coast of Marseille – which was actually quite interesting. 

This was originally built for defense purposes but was later used as a prison, similar to Alcatraz, however, much smaller and was used as a prison in the mid sixteenth century. 

This prison was made famous by the play (and now movie) The Counte of Monte Cristo, the oringally man, whom which the play was based upon was jailed in this prison and his story played out here. The movie we have probably all seen, is pretty true to his story, he really did befriend the old man in the cell next to him and they plotted their escape together so that he could enact revenge on those who caused him to be jailed under false pretenses. His original cell is pictured below!

As you can imagine the conditions in this period of time would not have been great, it was unsanitary and many people didn’t survive their sentence here. Most of the prisoners were accused of treason/treachery and many of those who survived here for a long period of time have their names written above their old cells.

The hot crowded boat then picked us up and took us to the Frioul Archipelago, these are a group of small islands (including the one on which Chateau D’If is located) and the one we visited was tiny and only has about 100 people living on it. The island pretty much caters to tourists with a bunch of small restaurants and cafes lining the port, other than there was a small supermarket and pharmacy and nothing much else. Apparently the locals sail over the Marseille for most things, including work and school.

The island itself was very pretty and we decided to head to the beach, which was described online as ‘sandy’ – hmmmm… The beach was more like a tiny inlet with a strip of sand and a lot of rocks. It was packed with people so we had to pop our shared towel down on a section of rock – it probably wasn’t my favourite beach experience but I will say that the view was great and the water was very refreshing.

The next day, not particularly wanting to hang around in the city of Marseille we decided to spend the day at the beach, we caught the bus along the coast and the houses and streets got noticeably less gritty and not as full of unclean people.

The beach itself was an interesting experience; Michael says it was like sun baking in a car park. The beach was not sandy but covered in tiny pebbles – they actually weren’t too uncomfortable but they made our clothes dirty. It was still much more pleasant to spend the day relaxing by the ocean on the rocky beach then roaming around the seedy city.

Nice

Suffice it to say we weren’t exactly sad to be leaving Marsielle the next morning. However, we went to get onto our train (that we had booked!) and there quite literally was no more room – the conductor was more or less a rude prick and told us to catch the next train in an hour. We then had to pay 15 euro to exchange our tickets and change our train connection – I was furious and hating Marseille at this stage. Finally the second train came, it was 15 minutes late, which was extremely bad for us as we were supposed to make a 10 minute connection, which is a rush at the best of times but was now seeming impossible. We finally caught a break when our connecting train was even later then the first one and were pulling up at the station as we arrived – thank god!

When we got to Nice we were THRILLED at how much nicer this city seemed, the streets were clean and not covered in graffiti and none of the shop windows were smashed in – woo hoo! We checked into our airbnb apartment and were ready to head out for a walk. We walked through the nice, clean, safe restaurant lined streets towards the beach and then went for a nice stroll along the English Promenade. The English Promenade is lined with beaches, some private and some public – all the private ones are fenced off from the public which we found rather amusing. The beaches here are covered in big rocks – suddenly we were both feeling a sense of appreciation for our beautiful sandy beaches back home!

 Above is Michael eating a snack on the famous blue chair along the English Promenade. 

We walked up (a lot of stairs) to a lookout point at the end of the English Promenade, which had amazing views of the entire promenade and all the beaches along it.

As you can tell by all the photos we enjoyed the view from here!

I don't know why I look so red, I swear I wasn't sunburnt!

The next day we decided to embrace what Nice is known for, the gorgeous blue sun lounges and striped umbrellas at the private beaches along the English Promenade. We had to pay (I know, it’s outrageous) to spend the day relaxing on sun lounges along the beach but it was actually a day well spent. Although it was expensive it was almost worth it to be able to lie on the beach and be comfortable, they also have thick mats that run all the way to the beach so you can walk to the beach without killing your feet on the rocks – getting into the water is another story, those rocks seriously hurt your feet.

Look at the size of those rocks!

View of Opera Plage from the English Promenade - there were hundreds of sun lounges!

The water was beautiful but the rocks were painful!

The beach itself was surprisingly rough, small waves break right on the water and you only head about 3 metres into the sea before you can’t touch the ground anymore! The water is really salty though so it was nice to kinda float in the water (and not touch the rocks!).

I had a really good time feeling a little rich (although we didn’t order any of the cocktails or food you can have sent to your lounge – way too expensive for us) and relaxing on a private beach, I am definitely missing our beautiful sandy beaches that you can lie on comfortably and for free!

The bottom two photos are from our little apartment in Nice, inclding our gourment (aka. backpackers) dinner!

This sums up our time in France, it was definitely interesting and we got to experience a variety of different cities, some of which I really enjoyed but some not so much. Michael and I have both agreed that having spent a lot of time in France and Spain recently we definitely enjoyed Spain better, it’s much cleaner and the people in general are much friendlier in small ways – also the weather in France really hated us haha!