Having lived in Paris and having been brainwashed by the North that it’s better than the South, I haven’t really thought of a reason to visit Marseille. I imagined it to be like a normal French city just closer to the sea. I was wrong. If anything, this more-Tuscan-than-French cathedral is already an illustration of how different this city is from the capital. There’s more sun, more warmth, and more laid back attitude than the snotty professionals of the capital although there’s also a bit of scruff. I only managed to visit this city since my flight to Morocco from Paris got canceled because of, you guessed it, la grève. My options were to fly from Brussels or Marseille instead which will cost me a day off of our Moroccan travel plans. I pushed for it and luckily, there was a cheap high-speed train ticket Paris-Marseille that gets you there in just 3 hours. I had also a few hours to spare before my flight so I had enough time to have a tour of the city. It definitely gave me a broader perspective on France. The Parisian pomp and splendor is just a bad generalization and expectation about the country and that it is as diverse as it is wide – that every region has a unique character, usually tied with not only their respective blend of wine and cheese but also the character of the people that effectively resulted from the blend of cultures that evolved and somehow clustered them to some unified civilization.
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