The first two days in Marseille

It does frustrate me when I can't effortlessly and instantly translate a city into words (which happens to me roughly 98% of the time, unsurprisingly).

Marseille is a city of terracotta rooftops and chimney pots and antennas, with giant seagulls floating over them (seriously, they're twice the size of the ones back home) and Mediterranean hills in the background - and that's just the view from the apartment where I'm staying. At street level it seems surprisingly quiet except for the pockets of busy chaos on main thoroughfares or markets, though this may be due to the ongoing strikes in France at the moment.

Then of course there are the distinctively European blocks of delicate apartments in pale stone with their dark wrought-iron balconies and lattices. The white marble Palais Longchamp with its statues and fountains and sweeping stairways was dazzling in the late afternoon sun as I walked around trying to combat jet lag on my first afternoon. Literally dazzling I mean - the glare of sunlight in crisp spring air refracting off stone and water into my poor tired eyeballs. Beautifully surreal in that "I've been awake for far too many hours" kind of way.

Day 2 began with sunrise over the rooftops. Climbing six flights of stairs is worth it for this.

Le Panier, where I expected to blend in with crowds of tourists, was a beautifully eerie ghost town drenched in colour. I fancifully imagined that all the inhabitants had closed up the pastel wooden shutters of their windows to keep out the liquid riot of paint that had flooded through their streets, leaving a high tide mark of graffiti on every wall.

This is the place I most want to put into words, but they are escaping me for the moment. I may need to go back.

A final note - I am keeping my eye out for Invader art installations and I spotted my first couple today. The seagulls have made quite an impression on me here, so this made me smile: