Marseille had the feel of a melange of northern African and French culture. There are many immigrants from Spain and North Africa, which contribute to the melting pot culture in marseille. You can take a leisurely cruise to the outlying islands along the coast, but for the budget conscious like me, I remained mostly around the old port area. Seafood restaurants selling freshly caught seafood were aplenty, as well as the numerous luxurious boats and yachts that were docked by the harbour. If only I had connections with someone with a yacht then I could take a trip out to sea.

In my opinion, Marseille looks like Dubrovnik to me because there are 2 forts along the coast, fort st jean and fort Nicholas, which served as a first line of defense against the enemies. It also marked the entrance to the city. Nowadays, the fort has been converted into the destination for tourist to visit to take photos and there are some temporary exhibitions throughout the year.

MuCEM is a new museum building which is near the cruise terminal. The cruise has departures to Tunisia, morocco, Algeria which makes me so tempted to visit these countries. MuCEM is a european and Mediterranean museum which has many interesting exhibits about ancient civilization along the Mediterranean and is worth a visit.

You should also climb up to notre dame de la garde which is a church on a very steep slope. The views of Marseille city from notre dame is just amazing, especially on a sunny day when you see far out to sea. Since Marseille is in Provence region, their specialty souvenir is handmade soaps, so don’t forget to buy some back. They smell really fragrant and come in all sorts of flavours, some look like chocolates that I nearly ate them.

I was lucky to meet a French guy traveling to Marseille and he invited me to watch a theatre performance with him as he had an extra free ticket. I gladly obliged. The performance was about the life of gypsies who are always on the move and how they are not accepted by society. I didn’t really understand the whole performance because there were some romanish and abstract parts. After that, we had a super late dinner at 11pm (I was so famished by then). We walked back to his house for 2h because we missed the last train. Tired max.