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Travel: Ancient port still colourful but not so stormy

Marseille’s reputation for gritty ruffians and Free-French spies is outdated
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Outside the Gare Saint Charles in the French city of Marseille, I told a taxi dispatcher I wanted to go to a hotel in the Rue Curiol. She raised her eyebrows, slightly amused. I'd find it noisy, she said. I didn't ask why.

Then she kindly told me I could save 15 Euros by walking there, just 10 minutes away - two traffic lights down to the Boulevard Garibaldi and, well, to the left. Ever the believer in my ability to intuit my way, I bumped a too-heavy suitcase, while carrying a shoulder bag with laptop and weighty camera bag, down the wide steps of the Gare Saint Charles and spent the next hour and a half looking for an avenue whose whereabouts no one seemed to know (or to admit they knew).

Finally, after buying a map in a bookstore ("no guide books to Marseille in English," I was told) and spending 20 minutes in a heap on a sidewalk figuring it out, I entered the steep, narrow and cobble-stoned Rue Curiol from halfway up a hillside and the Rue la Biblioteque. I descended slowly and gingerly, holding my suitcase up behind me to ensure that its sheer weight didn't pull or propel me downward.

I'd forgotten the number of the Hotel Residence Grillon, and too hot and tired to look for it and not spotting a hotel sign, went right to the bottom where the Rue Curiol runs into a major city thoroughfare called the Canebiere. But on the way down, and then heading back up, I noted a dozen or so women - of all ages, sizes and colours - sitting, mostly alone and purposefully, out on the building stoops.

A big blonde gal with breasts suspended in a net-like affair, pointed to a discreetly sign-posted hotel sign - the Residence Grillon, smack at the heart of this red-light district otherwise almost devoid of conventional (storefront) enterprises.

The Hotel Grillon proved oddly trendy, even chic - in a budget sort of way. And yes my third-floor room was basic, with only a curtain between the bed and toilet and a duvet that left something to be desired.

But at 60 Euros, and with free (though not entirely reliable) wi-fi in the room, and, best of all, a fine view of the Rue Curiol, I was happy. So I drank the remainder of the bottle of wine I'd carried from Avignon, then once again comfortable in none-too-clean jeans and T-shirt, went out for a celebratory beer and Penne Pomodora at a sidewalk café on a manic corner where the Canebiere meets the metro stop called Noailles.

An out-dated image of grittiness, even danger, clings to Marseille. Because this oldest of ports - founded in 600 BC by the Greeks - is no longer filled with sea-faring ruffians, Free-French spies and Algerian refugees.

Today Marseille is as safe as any other European city. And while the door to the Hotel Grillon was always locked, and the desk staffed exclusively by males, I never felt threatened on the Rue Curiol or anywhere else in this sprawling metropolis of 1.5 million.

Well, but for the aggressive gypsy who, when I swerved to avoid her, tried to trip me. But even around the Vieux Port, famed for its seafood market and (increasingly upscale) restaurants serving mussels and bouillabaisse, you're as likely to encounter a gaggle of German tourists as a couple of pickpockets.

In late May the air was hot and dry and the sea winds strong and steady. On a boat excursion eastward along the rugged limestone coast known as the Calanques (three hours, 19 Euros), our large, hefty-looking vessel was so tossed about by waves that a few of the passengers were seasick.

On this otherwise glorious outing, the boat passed through narrows known as the Cap Croissette, then along an unending series of rock massifs and headlands (caps) with names like Sormiou and Morgiou. All along this coast, the rare signs of human settlement were a few rustic cabins and the stone remains of long-abandoned homesteads.

Returning into the Vieux Port, filled with sailing yachts and fish boats, you can see, at this summit of this hilly city, the basilica known as Notre-Dame de la Garde - a massive Romano-Byzantine pile built in the mid-19 th century on a sea-faring theme.

A local bus wends up steep streets, through crowded neighbourhoods, to this basilica filled with folk-art paintings (shrine-like ex-votos) of long-lost fishing boats and their much-missed crews. From here you overlook the city - taking in the old and modern ports, the more modern and affluent neighbourhoods and a coastal corniche road that fronts onto hilly hamlets graced with upscale-looking, sea-facing houses.

But when a companion and I tried, with a hundred other hopefuls, to catch the regular #38 bus along this corniche to swim one of its rock-side pools or cove-like beaches, the service, we were told, had simply stopped - for the moment.

"Typical Marseille," grumbled a local. And, when I returned to the Gare Saint Charles to buy ongoing train tickets, the power failed, taking down the French railway (SNCF) computer system, and everything else in the station with it.

Back on the Rue Curiol, the big blonde with the boobs had moved her flashy body to a more visible perch on a tall-legged stool. And, as I approached the Hotel Grillon an even larger woman, possibly a transvestite, offered, in passing, a lovely "bonjour."