I was under the impression that getting to southern France ought to be a lot easier than getting to Athens had been, but such was not the case this time. It all depends on the type of connections you get, and, apparently, I had phoned my travel agent a bit too late this time (a mere two months in advance) to get something as comfortable as a nonstop flight at a reasonable price. En route to Athens the long non-stop leg from San Francisco to Frankfurt had been a luxury. This time I had lots of rests on the ground. The 24-hour transition from door to door began with the arrival of a Bayporter shuttle at my door at 5:15 on Easter morning. A bit over-cautious for a 9:45 departure, I thought, but the reason for the early pickup soon became clear: the driver proceeded one block, to the 700 block of Balra Drive, to pick up a couple who were catching a flight an hour or two earlier than mine. The early hour added a bit of drama to the beginning of my tour. As we proceeded down a nearly deserted freeway, a full moon hung low over the black bay. And after we crossed the Bay Bridge and left the City behind us, the glow of morning intensified in the sky and I saw the pale orange ball of sun appear from behind the hills of the East Bay, probably my first Easter sunrise since those days long ago when I believed in the resurrection.

We were at the airport by 6:00, plenty of time for me to check in at the U.S. Airways counter, have a pastry and airport coffee (mercifully strong, some gourmet blend rather than consumer grind), and begin the long process of self-amusement by reading a magazine.

By the first stop, Philadelphia, it was late afternoon, and its international terminal gave me the option of sampling one of several locally brewed ales on tap, in the company of crowds of rugged-featured people speaking German, for the most part, and all passionately smoking cigarettes in one of the last places where this is still allowed in America.

Sometime after departure from Philadelphia a meal was served, a movie was shown, which I may have watched. There was a brief period of darkness, during which I made a couple vain attempts to sleep. Then it was morning and we came in over the British Isles, over France and landed at the familiar terminal of Charles de Gaulle. I walked zombie-like through passport control and claimed my bags. Hoping to recheck my bags for the next leg and enjoy a coffee during my  3½-hour wait, I circled the entire terminal looking for an Air France counter but found that none of the monitors bearing Air France logos displayed information for departing Air France flights. These were apparently other airlines in the family, destined for Thailand or Algeria. Nor did the schedule of departures list my flight to Marseille; there was not even space to display flights that far in the future. Assuming that they were not ready to handle me, I began dragging my bags around, looking for a cafe. Cab drivers offered to take me into Paris, but I ignored them. Alas, when I found the lone cafe there was neither an empty table nor a space to stand at the bar, so I decided to go in search of a restroom. The narrow entry to the W.C. would be difficult to negotiate with two suitcases, and I contemplated leaving them briefly outside, then remembered notices to the effect that unattended luggage would be taken out into a field and exploded. Although my faculties of reason and communication were approaching zero, I still retained the rudimentary sense that it would not be wise to begin a trip by having my underwear blasted in a cloud of smoke and carried by the Paris winds. So I lugged the bags along, as they were meant to be. After that I noticed a rare unoccupied seat on the periphery of the terminal and sat down to stare blankly and abandon thoughts for three quarters of an hour. The threat of blowing up my luggage alerted me to the possibility of other threats, and I began noticing the people around me. There were many police or security officers brandishing compact assault weapons, seemingly ready to fire at a second's notice. And those thin dark black men with flawless French accents—they might be Algerian terrorists. I kept an extra close eye on my bags.

Ninety minutes before my departure the schedule listed flights well into the afternoon, but neither my flight nor any other Air France flight was among them. At that point I deduced that something was not quite right. I went to the Air France ticket counter and inquired, in English, about my flight. The friendly agent informed me that it departed from the other terminal and that there was still time to catch a shuttle from gate 28 to terminal D. Having been through Charles de Gaulle three times before, I assumed I had seen it all. I knew that there was another airport clear on the other side of the city, but not that there was another terminal at CDG. When I got to terminal D, I suddenly felt rather depressed. Here was a spacious, modern terminal with lots of restaurants and even a British pub. After finally checking my bags I did have time for half a pint of John Bull bitter at the John Bull pub, but I might have had a relaxing meal there if I hadn't squandered my hours in the outdated and overcrowded terminal that is reserved for the American airlines.

By the time I landed at Marseille an hour and twenty minutes later, I realized that it might have been just as quick and convenient—and probably more interesting—to catch the TGV to southern France, rather than flying. After discovering the other terminal I realized that the trains depart directly from a new wing of the airport terminal, bypassing Paris. After landing at the airport I still had to catch a shuttle. (Mercifully, it was easy to locate.) The bus dropped me at the railroad station in the heart of town, where the TGV would have taken me directly. By then I was clearly tired of lugging my bags, for I began bounding down the stairs without them toward the Hôtel d'Athènes, which I had already spotted. Then, a last vestige of consciousness alerted me that my load was too light, and I ran back up the stairs to fetch my bags from the bus's cargo bay before the unloading was completed.

After some confusion with the harsh-voiced elderly woman at the Hôtel d'Athènes about the spelling of my name and the number of people I represented, I checked into a small room on the deuxième étage. When I forced open the rusty latch on the old wooden shutters I had a view onto a blank stone wall at the opposite side of a ventilator shaft. The positive angle on this was that we were on the back side of the building, away from the noisy street. I anticipated a quiet and restful night. But I would have at least another six hours until darkness came and Maryl arrived, so I opened the Lonely Planet guide and consulted a map to make a plan for exploring the city.

Within a quarter hour I walked down the Boulevard d'Athènes and turned right on La Canebière, proceeding to the vieux port, where I stopped at a portside bar for a glass of Fisher La Belle. (I had seen a Kanterbrau sign on another bar but, unfortunately, it was closed.) The sun was shining through cracks in the heavy gray clouds, but the air was cold and a wind was blowing. Wearing only a light jacket, I felt a bit chilled by the end of my beer, but enjoyed any sensation after a body-numbing day of travel. After the beer I began wandering through the streets. As in Paris, the boulevards of Marseille tend to be lined with three- or four-storey early-century buildings with mansard roofs, narrow balconies. Many have human figures carved in stone—some grotesque or comical—as ornaments or even supports for balconies. Marseille is a cosmopolitan city, as one might expect of a major Mediterranean port, especially one whose trading history traces back to ancient Greek roots. The area that I explored, between the hotel and the port, is known as the quartier Belsunce and has a lot of Arabic occupants. With my attire, my complexion, and my fat camera bag I was conscious of being a tourist, but no one seemed to pay any notice. Well, one exception. After finishing a fast-food dinner of doner kebab, served in a baguette packed with french fries and tasty sauce, I wandered without aim past the shop fronts on the Rue St. Ferreol. When I glanced at a young couple in a deep embrace on a relatively deserted street, I considered, then abandoned the idea of trying to catch the moment on film. As I tried to stroll by nonchalantly, the man pulled back from the kiss momentarily, then said loudly, in English for my benefit, “Oh, my ---- is so fat!” His girlfriend said, “Shhhhh!” and they went back to it.

There were not many structures of historical interest within my range of exploration. As we had learned years earlier of Heraklion, the capital of Crete, the oldest of Marseille's historical identity was lost to the bombs of World War II. Only here the destruction was more systemmatic. As reported in the Rough Guide:

The oldest part of Marseille, Le Panier, where the ancient Greeks built their Massalia, and where, up until World War II, tiny streets, steep steps and houses of every era irregularly connected, formed a Vielle Ville typical of this coast. In 1943, however, Marseille was under German occupation and the quarter represented everything the Nazis feared and hated, an uncontrollable warren providing shelter for “untermensch” of every sort, including Resistance leaders, Communists and Jews. They gave the twenty thousand inhabitants one day's notice to leave. While the curé of St-Laurent pealed the bells in protest, squads of SS cleared the area and packed the people, including the curé, off to Fréjus, where concentration camp victims were selected. Out of seven hundred children, only sixty-eight returned. Dynamite was laid, carefully sparing the three old buildings that appealed to the Fascist aesthetic. Everything else, from the waterside to rue Caisserie and Grande Rue, was blown sky high.

As 9:00 and Maryl's expected arrival approached, I was determined not to be asleep when she arrived. But I was in no condition to read, so I kept walking around. I knew that buses arrived every 20 minutes from the airport. I caught the 9:00 bus as it was unloading, but she was not on it. I waited at the top of the broad concrete staircase, whose five flights lead down to the Boulevard d'Athènes. In the distance, over the tops of the buildings in the foreground, I could see the Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde, a 19th-century Romano-Byzantine basilica that glows on a hilltop at night like Sacré Coeur in Paris or a Mormon temple in the U.S. A young man stepped up and asked me what it was. I tried to answer in French, but didn't know exactly what it was at the time, other than some sort of cathedral. He said he prefered to speak English and revealed that he was Libyan but on vacation from an academy in Germany. He seemed friendly and invited me to tea. I realized that this was probably a common custom in his country, and possibly an honor for me, but I told him I really didn't want to miss the chance to meet my friend. The 9:20 bus unloaded and again Maryl was not on it. I was now wearing all of the warm clothes I had brought, including my synchilla pullover and a coat, but I was still a bit cold in the night air and wind. I huddled in the shelter of the wall at one side of the staircase, watching the road below for the next bus to approach. I saw the 9:40 go by but did not recognize Maryl's face, and she was not among the few passengers getting off. After the 10:00 came without her I went back to the hotel room and tried to read. Around 10:30 I heard a feminine voice downstairs and rushed down to greet her. Her flight had been delayed by snow in Munich. There was too much to talk about to consider sleep, so we walked down to the port, found a bar and, over two glasses of Armagnac, caught up on things.