(Written May 4th 2025)
I am standing at the central bus station in Marseille. My bus is delayed by ten minutes, although I think this is intentional, because the allotted bays are full – three spaces between two companies. That’s fine by me though, because mostly I’m reading my book on my phone and it’s so funny I can’t help but laugh out loud.
This is the last time I’ll really be in Marseille, for a long while, perhaps even forever.
I look up and suddenly realise the bus in front of me is going to Spain – Valencia, Barcelona, Alicante. “I should have lived here”, I think, “spent long weekends in Spain.” I don’t know who I’m kidding. For one, I don’t think I’d do well living in a big city and Marseille is the second biggest in the country. For another, I always feel on edge here, afraid of being out after dark in a much bigger way than I feel in most other cities. Plus, it was so difficult just to make it to Bordeaux – when would I have had time for Spain? It would have only taken me one extra hour anyway from my home in Toulon. I simply didn’t have the time.
Another bus, this one going from Barcelona all the way to Milan, pulls up. All logic flies out the window – why didn’t I live here again?
I didn’t even choose where I actually live, so I don’t know why I’m acting like I did. (Also, I took that bus partway already, from Toulon to Rome, anyway, just didn’t manage the whole line.)
The longing for places eclipses everything. I think about how I never made it to Valencia, about not getting to go inside La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. I don’t even know anything about Alicante – but if I went, then I would. I could go; find out.
It’s like every “Wish you were here” postcard has been ingrained on my soul like an instruction.
The bus arrives and we’re off. My last hurrah in Marseille is over. It went well, though I made two more attempts to get to Château d’If, the setting of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, without success. I have tried across many different months but the boats are always cancelled due to “bad weather.” This doesn’t mean storms – it has something to do with the fact that the tiny island can only sport a tiny dock, making it inaccessible under a variety of conditions — apparently every single day that I’ve ever been in Marseille. Rain or shine.
Still, I finally make it to the Musée des Beaux-Arts and the Natural History Museum nestled in the grand buildings of the Palais Longchamp. Both are free entry and quite delightful. The collections are on the small side. Small, but in my opinion one of the better art collections in the south – more variety and some excellent landscapes. The temporary exhibit also features lots of “sanguine”, literally translated as ‘blood’ but in actuality red crayon, and also lots of quill and ink. The red crayon is quite lovely but rare to see, and I don’t know if I have ever seen art done with a quill and ink like that!
I also go to the Cosquer replica cave. It’s part of the Old Port, next to the Mucem (famous, universally I’m sure, for being my least favourite museum ever), so I’ve passed it several times and have never gone in. I’ve previously understood it to be a museum about Cosquer – a diver – but decided to go once I learnt it was mostly a replica of the cave discovered by Cosquer on the coast in the nearby national park.
In it, there are prehistoric drawings, evidence of fire, and suggestions of ancient rituals. The sea was lower then, so they didn’t need all the diving equipment you would need to access the cave today. As the ocean continues to rise, more of the cave fills and more of the drawings are washed away.
The replica allows us to see a bit of what it’s like.
There are a few different caves like this in France actually. The actual caves are kept closed – the cumulative breath of people moving through the cave creates mould and other damage. There are replica caves that have had to be replicated multiple times because the same damage begins to happen to the replica over time. Most of the caves are inland, not coastal, and you need a car to see them. I had resigned myself to having to give them a miss. Cosquer is new and so wasn’t on my radar. It was a great surprise and I’m glad I got to go.
I also make it to the Illusions Museum recommended to me by a colleague at work, which I enjoy, though you really are better off going at least in a pair. Some things don’t make sense to me because you need a second person for the illusion to work.
The next day, I stumble upon the Saturday markets I’d forgotten about and try a variety of tourtons – little ravioli-like pastry parcels with different fillings of potato, leek, cheeses, beef, chorizo and more ‐ as a late breakfast.
Then I take a bus to the Calanques, opting to hike amongst it rather than taking a boat to look back at it from the sea. On the bus I end up talking to a young eighty-year-old (he’s insistent on the fact of his youth), because… well, it’s something in my DNA. People always talk to me. Why should my last day in Marseille be any different? (Honestly, the number of times I get asked for directions in places where I am also a tourist is a little insane. There comes a point where I’m simply too approachable.)
I walk (it’s a walk in the end, mostly, not a hike – wide gravel or concrete paths stretching out easily) to the main viewpoint for the area, enjoying the white stone and the impossible blue of the sea. From the top, I know I am close to the entrance to the real Cosquer Cave. The rock chandeliers and ancient drawings of horses are under the hill and rocks just west of me.
After that, it’s more of a wander. There’s not a lot of landmarks around. I stop on a rock to eat my pastry lunch, decidedly different from my pastry breakfast if you can believe me! Pain au chocolat tastes better when you’re looking at an ocean, I’m sure of it.
I finish up taking a long descent down to a beach I’d seen from the viewpoint. Knowing I have to go back up again makes every step downwards arduous. But it’s my last real day in Marseille, and I’m not going to bested by an overgrown hill. At the bottom, I sit and watch seagulls flit among the little cliffs, the water splashing up against the rocks.
Eventually it’s time to head for another bus.
The bus I’m on now, writing this actually.
“I’m going home.” It’s a perfectly regular thought, but there are times when it hits differently.
I can say it today, and it’s the last time I’ll get to say it for another two months. Except when I opt to call my hostel bed “home”, but that’s really a different beast entirely.
I’m looking forward to the next bit – wandering, all the places – but I don’t know that I’ll be very good at it. I’m actually a very domestic person it turns out. I hate eating at restaurants every night, I like cooking, and even cleaning up and resetting my living spaces. It’s grounding, and I am about to be completely untethered.
I made bread this week, as a kind of fortification. Stocking up on some internal domesticity somehow, since it involves both cooking and cleaning in three stages (pre, during, and post), plus then there’s bread at the end.
I’m already strategising possible meals that can be made on the go, meals where you can buy exactly what you need for it without needing any other general pantry items that there’s no point in buying for short stays.
And I’m thinking a lot about lasts.
This was my last weekend living in France. I didn’t even spend it in town. Should I have? Should I have stayed home and experienced my last weekend living in this city consciously? But I didn’t, which means last weekend was my last weekend here and I didn’t even realise it. Except… I spent all Saturday on Porquerolles, and that’s really closer to Hyères. So was my last weekend here the one before that? Except I spent half of that one in Greece, and the one before that wholly in Greece. My last full weekend at home was some weeks ago now, back in March.
There’s something to be said for knowing when something is ending, when you do or experience something for the last time and you know to really savour it.
But I think we’d drown if we always lived that way. It’s good to have unknowns sometimes – it gives hope a foothold. Maybe I’ll be back. Maybe I’ll get to eat tourtons again. Make it to another of these prehistoric caves. Maybe I’ll get to come back to Marseille and Porquerolles and Toulon again, revisit some places, hike some of the other paths I missed. Maybe I’ll get to see these people again, walk these streets again. Maybe I’ll even go into the Mucem again, just to see if it’s improved with age.
Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll dream about little trips I won’t end up taking. There’s so much in the world – do I really have the time to go back to a museum I didn’t even like the first time?
After all, there’s still Valencia. Alicante. And much sooner, my upcoming ‘post-contract’ list.
There have been a lot of lasts. But there’s about to be a whole lot of firsts. I don’t know what it will be like, don’t know what each new place will hold for me. That’s where the hope lives.
