Toulon (week 23)The city of Toulon is undergoing an urban renewal, which appears much further advanced than Marseille's. In the areas around the harbour, maybe 1/3 of the facades on the old row houses have been recently redone and another 1/3 are covered in scaffolding to allow their work to be done. The activity, cleanliness, and wider and straighter streets combine to make Toulon quite pleasant for a tourist. When we surfaced from the underground carpark, we emerged into the middle of their Marché de Noël. Spread over several squares around the naval base, it included a weird animatronic elves' village, a forest of fake snow-coated Christmas trees, "log cabin" stalls selling jewelry and food, and a real skating rink. The ice wasn't great since it was 16C when we were there, but there were many intrepid skaters trying it out (based on the skill level of some, they must have been expats from colder climes). The cathedral was also in on the act, filling one of its bays with an elaborate nativity scene. The Virgin who is normally the central figure was forced to peep over the backdrop sheet to look at the lights on the Christmas tree.
We went to the Musée national de la Marine, a naval museum next to the naval base. It is quite small, and is mostly models, paintings, and videos - there are very few actual relics and no museum ships. Compared to, say, the Maritime Museum in Halifax, or even the Fisheries Museum in Lunenburg, the exhibits are sparse. There are some interesting actual ship figureheads, and two of the models are enormous - including the masts they would measure 15' high. I also thought it was strangely emotionless, perhaps because the French have no particular defining naval moment - no Trafalgar or Spanish Armada. In fact, the longest video dealt with the scuttling of the Vichy fleet in 1942, hardly a high-water mark for a navy!
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