If you said Marseille, go to the head of the class. Bouillabasse is the famous Marseille fish soup. Every restaurant has the official recipe. In fact, there is no official recipe that any two cooks can agree on. It is basically any left over fish cooked together. I am sure there will be those that insist certain fish are included, but no one will tell you which ones. Then they take the stock and serve it as soup. The fish is served separately from a platter.
The Vieux Port is a huge rectangle with a fort on each side of the entrance to the harbor. Restaurants and hotels line up on each side of the harbor. This is really a beautiful harbor and we had a berth that had an unbeatable view. Out our back door was the beautiful Notre Dame de la Garde with its gold leafed Madonna and Child watching over the entire city. It is all lit up at night and looks more like an ethereal castle than a church. The inside of the Romanesque building is covered in gold leafed tiles that glimmer down on the congregation below. It is at Marseille that I met up with my friend Jun from San Francisco. He has a nephew, Eugene that lives a couple of miles from the harbor. We all went out to dinner with Eugene’s family. Their little boy PJ charmed us with his big broad smile and gleaming eyes. PJ is only 6 but speaks French, English and Ilocano, a Filipino dialect and loves pizza. The next afternoon, they invited us to their home for a true Filipino dinner. We stuffed ourselves on fresh shrimp, pansit, lumpia, adubo and fried bananas, tron, for dessert. Christy, Eugene’s wife made sure we had a big plate of leftovers to take home with us. We ended up having enough leftovers for three meals. After dinner, we took Bruce to the train station. He is headed for Rome to meet his sister. They are going to spend a couple of weeks touring around Italy together. I of course could not help myself in suggesting enough places to visit that it would take a month to see it all. Bruce and his sister might meet up with me again in Barcelona.
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