Marseilles Barcelona is nicer and she’s right

Cruising, we are in port for a only a day, so time is tight. Our city visits allow first impressions only, a sort of nautical speed dating. We don’t have time to get to know you, so be ready to impress and be judged.

So far, we have day-dated Marseilles and Barcelona and they couldn’t have been more different. This is surprising, because they are both big, old girls, port cities sharing the same coast, a couple of hundred nautical miles apart.  We might have expected their charms to be similar. 

But no. I have bad news for the civic leaders of Marseilles, which proclaims that it will be ‘European cultural city in 2011’. It stinks. I have good news for Barcelona. It is beautiful, vibrant, elegant, charming. We all want to see more of Barcelona. But one date with Marseilles was plenty.

Marseilles was filthy, so filthy that we made excuses for it. Perhaps the strikes, we mused. Marseilles had ingrained grime, that spoke of lost civic pride and begged a TV-style white tornado. And it was seedy - bag-clenching, fast-walking, look-behind-you seedy.

Was it all bad? No, the old port is now a delightful small boat harbour, lined with coastal fishing boats and smart pleasure craft. Family fishers were unloading and selling their night’s catch dock-side. Tourists and fish buyers jostled happily to gawk at the haul. Hughie and I went fish-spotting until the others dragged us away.

Away from the rubbish and smell, we found pretty, narrow streets in the old city and people going about their business. The kids had a carousel ride that made them and us smile. But our one day with Marseilles was enough. We were happy to say au revoir, without asking for her number.

Was it because I could buy slices cut from the most exquisite Jamon Iberico (aged air-dried leg ham from Iberian porkers fed acorns), from Joselito and Jabugo, and eat them standing in the crowd at the St Josep market, that I was liking Barcelona a lot? Well yes, but it was much more than that. We all felt it. 

Walking La Ramba, the long, plane-tree lined pedestrian shopping street from the harbour made all of us happy. Beautiful flower stalls, pet shops with hamsters and land tortoises (so tempting to put one of these clumsy, ambling, vegetarian centenarians into my bag), performance artists that made us laugh and freaked us out, a happy crowd. All good.

Tidy streets, traffic that did not view pedestrians as prey, the odd cop - all combined to make Barcelona feel good. And did I mention the market St Josep? Oh, what a market! Hams not seen in Ausralia, entire shops devoted to mushrooms, happy, proud shop-keepers. It screamed a people and a city into food. The sort of place that had me planning feasts.

So, Barcelona, can we have your number please? We want more.