I wasn’t planning to swim.
I’d only meant to walk the Corniche, watch the city tilt toward the sea, maybe find a spot to sit with a sandwich and sweat through the late morning.
Marseille in May has that kind of heat, the kind that presses on you gently, like a hand on your back, guiding you somewhere you hadn’t meant to go.
Below me, the rocks were already scattered with people. Not tourists, locals.
A boy passed me carrying a towel and a baguette, barefoot and unfazed. Two women were sunning themselves with a radio playing faint Arabic pop. And then there was the sea: stupidly blue, rippling like glass until someone broke it open.
The first to jump was a teenager in denim shorts. No hesitation, no buildup, just a shout and a blur and the clean slap of his body hitting the water.
Then another. And another. Someone clapped. A dog barked. Time began to loosen.
I found a spot on a warm stone and sat, let the sun work on me a bit. Watched an older man stretch; slow and deliberate, before diving with the kind of grace that made everything else feel unnecessary.
He barely made a splash. Like he belonged to the water more than the land.
Something about it, about all of it, felt like a dare, or maybe an invitation.
I hadn’t brought a swimsuit. But there was no ceremony to it here. No rules. You just jumped.
So I did.
And the water hit like memory, like everything I hadn’t felt all winter – cold, bright, and real.
I came up gasping and laughing and blinking at the sun and when I looked around, no one was watching. Everyone had gone back to their own conversations, their own sun, their own thoughts.
That was the magic of it, truly, no spectacle, no “you had to be there.”, nah. Just a moment that was, and then passed.
Later, I dried off on the warm rock, ate cherries from a paper bag, and thought about how many parts of travel are like that, how the best things happen when you stop trying to plan, how all it takes sometimes is one person going in first.
And how lucky we are when we decide to follow.
