The shop for non-shoppers
- rnv178
- Jun 22, 2022
- 4 min read
If they had not invented mornings, I would not have done much, as any time before mid-day sees me as highly active. After lunchtime I can be mistaken for a patient in postoperative recovery. It was why this morning, before we headed off on the next leg of our journey, I was to be found on the public beach, the Plage des Catalans, in Marseille and staring out at the Château d’If.
The chateau occupies most of a three-hectare island about 1.5 kilometres off Marseille’s shore, and near to the Vieux Port where we were staying. I wanted to see it because of its history, as it became widely known thanks to Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, as the Château d’If was where the count was held. The place has indeed been a prison, like Alcatraz, and many thousands of prisoners were held there, especially in Huguenot times. Some were even shot there. Château d’If ceased being a prison in the late 19th Century and no one is ever known to have escaped. In Dumas’ novel, the main character Edmond Dantès escapes the island after 14 years of being locked up. He was the so-called Man in the Iron Mask who did exist but was never held at the Château d’If. You need good imagination to write a novel. Mine was working overtime as I stood on the public beach looking at an island portion of history.
The beach showed plenty of activity. There were people all around me, as well as an underwater museum, the Musée Subaquatique de Marseille. Its aim is to expose the fragility of the world’s oceans, and it does. Around me there were locals seemingly doing anything that began with the letter “s” - swimming, snorkelling, sunbathing, strolling, showering, smoking, shadow boxing, and in once case even stripping. The Plage des Catalans was worth an early-morning visit and was a busy place to be. During the Plague of the 17th Century, it had housed a lazaretto, which is a quarantine facility for maritime travellers, before it was repopulated by a group of Catalan fisherman. The area developed from there.
From the beach, I wandered back to the hotel to meet a good friend and from there we walked into the back streets of the Vieux Port. It was the definition of a whistle-stop tour. If I blinked, I would have missed it. There was a time when the Vieux Port had been larger, with pontoons and quays extending into zones that are shopping areas today. I am a hopeless shopper, a dasher-inner-dasher-outer, but my friend reassured me that the Maison Empereur was perfect for the shopper who had no wish to shop.
The source was right. It is difficult to classify the Maison Empereur, but it is a place you enter without any idea of what you seek. You leave with your hands full of goodies, each of which you have bought for no reason, yet have convinced yourself that the purchase is essential. The item, whatever it may be, is something you had long been seeking. I cannot imagine anywhere else on the planet to go shopping for a special occasion, be it personal or a public holiday. I will not spoil the surprise. Go there, browse, I challenge you not to purchase, and then stop in one of the many cafés nearby. There you can see the French dunking their croissants into coffee, just as the English dunk biscuits into tea. Maison Empereur is a classic of the Vieux Port area of Marseille.
It was soon time to continue with our ever-moving journey. I waved farewell to my friend, climbed into the car, and headed towards a small Languedoc village near the town of Béziers. On the way, we were expecting to parallel the Mediterranean coast, with broad sea to our left. The sea was certainly where we expected to find it, but there was water on our right as well. These were lagoons, plenty of them, ideal for natural swimmers, and which had been present since the Ice Age. It was the Camargue, western Europe’s largest river delta. It was astonishingly flat, almost a huge ironing board, with one-third being filled by lakes or marshland.
The region is also home to the Camargue horse, said to be one of the oldest breeds in the world. These are typically grey, native to the area, and were traditionally used for working with cattle. They achieve their colour thanks to a white and hairy coat covering a black skin. As for white horses galloping across flat French plains, so much the romantic image of the Camargue, we never saw one. That is not to detract from the beauty of the area as we drove.
From the Camargue it was onwards to the Languedoc, as we approached our objective for the day. The Languedoc was once huge and independent from the Kings of France. Its capital was Toulouse. It has now disappeared, subsumed by the so-called Occitanie region in 2016, which contains 80% of the former, historic Languedoc. The remaining 20% now falls under the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Languedoc has vapourised, a victim of modern politics.
This is a shame, as the world knows the Languedoc for many things, perhaps especially its wine. The phrase “as far as the eye can see” certainly applies to its vineyards, which do disappear over the horizon. I find it hard to imagine how it might be possible to live in the former Languedoc and stay sober. In the early 21st century, the region produced more wine than the entire USA and we were about to stay there.
I patted my stomach as I drove, to reassure my liver. “All will be fine,” I muttered. “I promise to be careful.” I knew it had been a long day if I was talking to my liver.
***
Ate at:
Restaurant La Forge, 22 Avenue Abbé Farroux, 34600 Bédarieux
Tel: +33(0)467951313
Email: restaurantlaforge@sfr.fr
Comments