September 5 – Train through the Old Town and the Waterfront

This morning we decided to take the second of the two tourist train routes to see more of the city.  We had to wait quite a while for the train to leave…almost everyone was going on route 1 to the cathedral on the hill.  One other couple finally showed up for our train and the driver left with only the four of us aboard. 

We saw a number of the old buildings and forts we had seen on our first couple of days of sightseeing. 

How ingenious. They are working on Fort St. Jean at the entrance to Marseille's harbor and there is scaffolding around one of the tall towers.  However, instead of seeing the unsightly scaffolding they have draped the structure in sheeting designed to look like a sunny summer sky with light clouds.  Admittedly the colors of the sky and the sheeting are different shades of blue but it looks a lot better than scaffolding.  

We have seen similar types of coverings a few other places here in Europe where the scaffolding is covered with sheeting painted to look like the building behind it.  This is also much better than just scaffolding.

And it went along the front of a newer harbor where we got new views.

It eventually worked its way into the old town and it took many of the streets that we had visited in our earlier wanderings. And we saw lots of laundry hanging to dry.

At one point we got quite stuck as a rather large pickup truck towing a trailer had parked on the street.  Between it and the cars on the other side of the street the train couldn’t get through.  But eventually the truck was moved over and we were on our way.

The tour circled the Cathedral de la Nouvelle Major.

We also hit some newer sections of town where there were some rather interesting, more modern buildings.

The train ride was it for our sightseeing today.  It is still quite hot so we spent the rest of the day in the hotel room doing more photo work and packing up for our transfer tomorrow to Avignon.