MARSEILLE, AJACCIO & ROME – 13-15 October 2026
Forty-nine years ago, I visited San Francisco for the first and last time. I’d always wanted to see San Francisco and in fact had done a geography school assignment on the city, gathering images from travel brochures I’d found in a travel agency. So, along with my husband and three-month-old son, David, we landed in for a week’s visit to SF.
We stayed with a friend of my husband, can’t recall his name, but he was renting a house in the suburbs which just happened to have been built by Willie Mays – and I was taken by the fact that he had his name embossed on the shower screen doors. And, sadly, that was the limit of my memories from SF. I saw the Golden Gate Bridge, China Town and some of the beaches at 55 mph from a car window. Admittedly, I did have a 3-month-old with me, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded being walked around China Town in a stroller.
Fast forward 49 years and I read each of the write ups for the Viking Mediterranean cruise “included” shore trips and thought they sounded ok. And this is our experience in Marseille, Ajaccio and Rome – mostly from the window of a bus with “independent exploration” time thrown in when we were virtually adrift at sea without any oars.
13 October – Marseille – note to self, don’t have 2 cups of tea and a fruit juice before visiting Marseille – We arrived in port at 7am. Christine had opted out of seeing Marseille as she’d been there before and wasn’t a fan of either Marseille or France. Rhonda and Ray were on my bus along with around 40+ others. I’ve never been to France so was pretty keen to see as much as I could.
We had breakfast … unfortunately I’d had juice and 2 (or 3) cups of tea – rookie error which would come back to haunt me. We left the “new port” at around 9.30am and there was a roughly 1-hour drive into Marseille itself – all up the “tour” would be 4 hours. We drove through the new port and then followed the coastline for about 30 minutes, then turned around and drove into the main part of town and spent about 45 minutes driving around, stopping at last at the Cathedrale Notre Dame de la Major at which point the guide said something like see you here at 12.30pm – and we were on our own. Before leaving us she did tell us that there were no public toilets in Marceille, saying, “you need to go into a cafe and buy a coffee then ask to use their WC”. So, I left Ray & Rhonda to go look around and checked out a cafe as by this time (and all the tea I’d consumed). I was looking for a toilet.
Now over the years, from previous people, I’d been told that the French don’t take to foreigners who don’t at least try to speak French, so I was armed with my 60-year-old high school French. The first cafe I went into had a big “out of order” sign. The next one that I went into I was told that I needed to buy food with my coffee – so I said – “ok don’t worry”. With the third one I decided to give the French a go, “Parlez-vous anglais?” He mumbled something so I came up with, “café au lait s’il vous plaît” and I was told in no uncertain terms that I could only have coffee if I ordered food. Now, I’m 1/2 an hour away from having to be back to the bus and any food would take longer than that, so I gave up.
Here’s what I think … Five cruise ships docked at the new port this morning, Christine did a calculation (based on possible passengers) and figured out that anywhere from 10 – 16,000 foreigners had descended on Marseille. The cafe owners must hate it when these pesky tourists descended on their toilets (buying a measly cup of coffee), no wonder they wanted us to order food too LOL. Nevertheless, I did have some positive experiences …
The first cafe we passed whilst on the buss was this one and they had big pot plants of red Bottle Brush (yep one of our Australian native plants), pretty cool.
Nice coastline, very impressive houses but no clear architectural theme (not like Lisbon and Barcelona).
The traffic was horrific in the town, due to a student protest march – Google said that it involved 35,000 protestors but the police were saying it was 3,500. I wanted to get out and submerse myself in the culture and join them, I felt like I was seeing something out of Les Mis.
Eventually we stopped at the big cathedral which is right next door to the original cathedral which is much smaller than the current cathedral – it was built in the 12th century in a simple Romanesque style. You cannot get inside this to check it out.
The front door of the much bigger Cathedrales de la Major. I loved the door.
The Cathedral from the plaza – sitting right next door to the old one.
The inside was nice, one of my favourite Cathedrals I think. Loved the mosaics all over the walls.
Beautiful light – I’m thinking that someone should write a book about all the different styles of lights in churches – every single one has been different.
This is a work of art that I haven’t seen before. It was created in 1838, made with fabrics then covered with coatings on an iron or wooden frame. The figure is then painted and gilded,
One of two (or three) naves, I liked the colours used for this one.
The other nave, also very nice.
I particularly liked the floor of the building, mosaics everywhere, truly stunning.
Not at all impressed with our first excursion, Marseille gets a thumbs down but there were some positives …
- I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know that I successfully made it back to the ship without being able to use a restroom (pretty good effort for a little old lady).
- I think this Cathedral was better than most of the others I’ve seen.
- I got to see the student protest, the only experience that I felt was really authentic.
- They served up really good French food for dinner later that night on the ship.
14 October – Ajaccio – it was a surprise to find out that we were in Corsica and our mission was to come up with a good reason that Viking would think this was a good place to visit – a major city on the French island of Corsica. I didn’t have high expectations for our second excursion, as it was part of France. However, I did make sure that I only drank one glass of juice with breakfast (and no tea)! Turns out though that the Corsicans are lovely people, not at all like the mainlanders. Again, we were picked up, taken to a couple of “sights” and then had a walk in the city with a couple of thousand other tourists. I wore a bright blue dress and one of the little old ladies on our walk through the city told everyone else “follow the woman in blue – that’s the only way I haven’t gotten lost” lol – which was a surprise as I think I was one of the shortest people on the tour.
Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica in 1769 and there’s Bonaparte stuff all over the place. This is his memorial. I managed to get a shot without too many tourists.
We then drove along the coast passing this fish farm (apparently they sell all their fish to Italy as there’s a bigger market there). There was a nice walk to a “signal” tower from the middle ages where they used to light a fire to alert the islanders of a potential threat. I would have liked to have walked out to it but it wasn’t on offer.
The offshore islands look like they’re volcanic.
The city from afare.
The island is quite mountainous, and I asked the guide if there were any caves on the island and he said there were, would have liked to see some of them.
We then went into the city and first battled another student protest (apparently, they think they have to have too many hours in the classroom) and then the other tourists. We followed the guide to look at the outside of the house Bonaparte was born in (cannot get inside), then along a long street with loads of shops and tourist trinkets. We then stopped at the Fesch Museum where he explained that Bonaparte on his trips of pillaging other countries picked up a lot of artwork for the King of France (or Italy or maybe both) and put aside some of the artwork for himself putting it all in the hands of his uncle the Cardinal Joseph Fesch. I’m not sure that his story is the actual story as Wiki paints a different picture. At about this time the guide said we could make our own way back to the ship but recommended that we have a look in the Museum, so when everyone left, I paid the ∈7 and spent a good hour viewing the paintings – after all, I’m never going to get to the Louvre so this was the next best thing.
So, there was a positive note, I got to see some paintings that I would never have seen (not sure about the Renaissance paintings in the Sydney Art Gallery). I hadn’t realised that there was such a difference in paintings from the 1400s and those paintings of the Renaissance. I particularly liked the ones like the painting below, blown away by how much detail was in their work.
See the detail in the fur on his shoulders and his hat. And up close it was even more impressive.
15 October – Rome – our mission (should we accept it) was to find 2 locations in 2 hours using a dodgy map and not knowing where the hell we were – After the last two less than average excursions, I was a little more optimistic when I read the time allotted to our excursion and it appeared that we would have 8½ hours away from the boat. Great, I would surely be able to get to the Colosseum during the 8½ hours. My son David had stressed that if nothing else I should spend time at the Colosseum. Checking the timetable, I determined that we were in Group 30 (that’s how many tour coaches picked up people at the dock), and we’d leave at 9.30am for the “Snapshots of Rome” tour. It took 2 hours for us to get from the port to Rome (ok, to Rome & back = 4 hours that we’re never getting back). When we got to Rome we were then driven past all the “highlights” (see below) which took about 2 hours with Rome traffic.
Some sort of Roman entrance – Christine did a pretty good job of taking photos out of the coach window.
What looked like some medieval palace or castle in the distance, you can’t get in there to explore so getting a shot from the coach was as good as it would get.
Ah, the Colosseum, it looked ok from this angle, but we were at the other side of the entry gate and there were a shit-load of people. When I saw all those people, and calculated the distance it was from the point we were being dropped off, I decided that the Colosseum wasn’t for me. I felt bad cause David really wanted me to have a good look in there, he said it was fabulous, but C’est la vie .
Another big building pointed out, who knows what it was but it was impressive.
And a nice fountain and a pretty cool looking building – well done on photos Christine (she was sitting in the window seat).
We were then dropped off at the “pickup spot” with 2 hours to wander around with our dodgy map with “good things to see” highlighted in yellow. It took Christine and me 5 minutes to figure out which way to go and when I looked around everyone else had disappeared – where had they gone? We walked down a road, found a cafe and decided that it was time for a Limoncello. The waitress brought us our drinks and then put a dot on the map showing where we were in relation to the pickup spot. Over our drinks we decided that the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain were feasible in the 2 hours – the Colosseum was definitely a no-go. The waitress pointed us in the direction of the Pantheon.
Looking on the bright side, the Limoncello was amazing and even though we felt that we’d been dropped in the ocean with a life raft and one paddle, it was still cool to be in Rome on an adventure.
We’re standing beside this, looking down at “something” when Christine pointed out the sign beside me “First example of masonry Stadium ever built in Ancient Rome” I wish they’d given me some sort of date. This must have been dug up when constructing the building surrounding this hole in the ground. Looked cool though.
After many twist and turns we came to the Pantheon – so many tourists, had to be at least a thousand. There seemed to be some order to the chaos with a couple of “lines” so Christine stood in the line and I followed it down to the start. There was a guy standing there and a barrier, I questioned him and found out that they would allow some more people to enter in 20 minutes, or you could book a ticket on-line (giving you instant entry) but the on-line bookings were closed for the day. So, I made my way back to Christine and we figured if we didn’t get in after 20 minutes we’d give the Pantheon a miss.
We’re finally close to getting in, we will have to pay ∈7 – we were happy with that. The doors are apparently original.
And, we’re inside. Originally built under emperor Augustus (27 BC–AD 14) and reconstructed under Hadrian (117–138) I’m sure it’s had a lot of other renovations cause this doesn’t look like an AD138 construction. One wonders why they built it with a hole in the ceiling AND when it rains, where does the water go? Measuring roughly 8.7 to 9 meters (about 30 feet) in diameter, the hole is the only source of natural light but surely it had another purpose.
The crowd is still there as we leave.
So, here we are at the Trevi Fountain. Took us a while to find it, dodging in and out of small narrow streets. I took this photo after climbing up a couple of steps, to get a better view. You couldn’t get anywhere near the fountain, let alone toss a coin into it. When you look at the photo on Wiki, it’s really stunning, but couldn’t see a thing (not happy face emoji).
We then meandered back to the cafe for another drink. Christine did a good job of turning when needed. I like the narrow streets.
And this small plaza with the circular walls surrounding the plaza that was cool.
Found yet another church, nice ceiling on this one.
We found the cafe without any problem – it was like meeting up with an old friend when the waitress took out order – limoncello and a margarita pizza. A nice end to the day and despite what we thought was a sub-par shore excursion, we did have a great adventure.
Helpful hints for this type of cruise …
- Don’t expect to see much of the on the included on-shore excursions.
- Christine thinks she’d rather pay an extra $2,000 to do better excursions.
- An option, that we will try out in Malta is to hire a third party to talk us to all the good spots – watch this space.
- In France if you want to use the WC, take off the lanyard around your neck and hide it – and brush up on your French.
Have you looked up the protests? Its about substandard buildings, lack of teachers, and a curriculum that’s not preparing them for the future. I think they’ve got some guts and good on them
Yes, there were various causes given to us but lack of teachers seemed to be the main one we were told. Yes, they’re brave.