Today we arrived at the very busy cruise terminal in Marseille. In addition to us, the much bigger Enchanted Princess was in port as well as an MSC ship.
We caught the shuttle bus into the city/old port area and once again let geocaching be our guide to the sights. After our 100% success rate with finds in Civitavecchia, today’s performance was quite poor. Mainly due to the fact that all the information was in French and I could only occasionally pick out enough key words. This is not to imply our Italian is good – just that the caches in Italy also included the English translation while the French ones did not!
Our geocaching directed journey started outside the massive Port area and took us into the narrow streets of the old town.
From there we ended up in Belsunce. This area was quite a bit busier and, if truth be told, a bit grotty! We had zero success finding caches and didn’t feel inclined to look too hard. Based on the cultural demographic of the area and evidence of damage, I did wonder at the time if this was the scene of the recent riots. Research back on the ship confirmed my suspicions!
From here we headed to the Vieux Port. We thought that it was a bit like Constitution Dock in Hobart- only on steroids! And of course, being Europe, it had 3 forts thrown in for good measure!
After a coffee stop at one of the sidewalk cafes we went past the port to the Palais Du Pharo. Once again our geocaching was thwarted – this time by huge groups of what looked like children in a school holiday program seeking shelter in the shade of the park.
After the heat of our Italy ports this morning had seemed quite mild by comparison. But as the afternoon progressed the temperature rose into the 30s so we decided that we had seen enough of Marseille and it was time to return via shuttle bus back to our ship and the sanctuary of the pool deck.
Westysclan World Cruise 2023 
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