“You know you’re still in ... France, no?” Our Airbnb host regarded us quizzically as we set oversized backpacks onto a plush, quilted bed. “I’m not so sure about pizza.”
The flat we rented, just off the Vieux Port in Marseille, had an oddly low ceiling but was otherwise spacious. “Yeah!” I replied with a half-laugh. “But we heard there is a Neopolitan pizza place at the top of the hill that is—”
“Mountain,” my husband corrected me. “Top of the mountain.” He knew something I did not.
We had arrived in Paris by plane, had taken a train to Caen to view the beach where the Canadian D-Day landing took place, and had then rented the only car with an automatic transmission in the region and explored Normandy. When our next flight landed in Marseille, we were hungry but had not lost that cram-it-all-in vacation spirit. We couldn’t just eat anything.
Pizzeria La Bonne Mère looked like it would only be a short walk from our room, but not being one to map my vacation plans topographically, I had no inkling that the restaurant was, in reality, significantly uphill.
We walked, one foot after the next, climbing towards cheese and tomato sauce. When we arrived in a determined fashion, a chic, beaming shop owner approached us a few steps outside the threshold. “Would you like to make a reservation?” she asked.
“Oh, uh—no, we would just take whatever table is available now,” I replied.
“Ah! But we do not open until 6 for dinner.” She looked us over and calculated our 4 p.m. arrival time, our sneakers, our disappointment.
“Here, sit.” She pulled two patio chairs towards us and offered glasses of ice water, which we both accepted. “Another night? You can come back, yes?” My stomach was audible now. I watched a family, also tourists, walking the steep slope past us towards the Notre-Dame de la Garde Basilica a few blocks away, from which the pizzeria took its name. “Yes. Yes, let’s come back,” I said. I made arrangements for two nights away, my husband’s birthday.
We walked back down the mountain. I bought a little plastic basket full of tiny strawberries and ate them quickly like popcorn. We caught sight of a pallet of shrink-wrapped brown bottles on a jack being positively shoved through a small wooden door that read “La Minotte.” It was a brewery, the smallest I have ever seen.
Our second walk to La Bonne Mère seemed somehow less steep, more causal. This time, we had the comfort of knowing we would be expected—and that there would be a meal awaiting us.
Words + Photoby Paige Latham Didora