Breakfast in
a bus station.

The first rule of travel is to trust the room with the most noise. Not the polished one with the clever menu and the soft lighting. The one where a woman is shouting at a radio, somebody's uncle is asleep in a chair, and the bread arrives without being ordered.

By six forty-two, Marseille has already been awake for hours. A bus exhales at the curb. A man in a blue apron slides two eggs into a pan like he has done it every morning of his life. He does not ask how I want them. This is correct.

“You do not need a reservation for a good meal. You need a little nerve.”

We eat standing up, then sit down, then order the thing we saw on someone else's plate. Outside, the city is beginning its argument with the day. Inside, there is coffee. We stay.