She is a very interesting person. She works as an RN in New York part of the year to supplement the income she gets from the 3 vacation rentals she owns. She lives in whatever one is empty at the time and moves around depending on her rental calendar. Two places are in Aix and one is the Luberon. All are very comfortable and cosy. None is too personalized. That was important to me because it creeps me out to think of staying somewhere that it is very obvious that the owners normally live. We did that in Montreal and they actually came in on us one morning before we left the place without even knocking.
I asked her if she eventually wanted to move to France to live permanently and manage those properties. She said she wanted to do that, but with someone else managing the properties for her. In fact the latest one she bought will likely be the place she retires to in a few years.
We had successfully avoided having lots of stairs to climb the rest of the trip, but her place in Aix was so lovely, it was worth the effort. There were lots of other discomforts for most Americans, but we enjoyed our stay in her place and it was great for a homebase. If you click on the link above, there are better pictures. The apartment is on the top floor above this Occitane store on a great centrally located street called the Rue Espariat.
We just had to go downstairs, turn left and walk a block to the Monoprix to shop for food and sundries.
City living means being in close proximity to your neighbors. Being on the top floor sometimes means you can see more of their activities than you might want to see, especially when it's hot, they or you have no air conditioning and the windows are open. I didn't take any pictures of that.
Some people successfully block those views and the sun with flowers.
Our street was very busy and noisy a lot of the time.
It was really noisy at night the first few days we were there. Around this corner to the left there was a bar. Besides its normal noise, people were practicing for the music festival that happens all over France on the Summer Solstice. It's a free event for all who attend and there is music everywhere.
Our street had lots of tour groups passing by. The Occitane store below us was even pointed out to some groups.
The morning after the big music night, we were serenaded by this guy for a couple of hours. He was very good and was doing pretty well if you look in his guitar case.
We had no AC, only fans, so we mostly left the windows open and closed the shutters. If we left for a whole day, we shut everything up to keep the cool from the night in.
The night of the music festival, we walked down our street to this square to have dinner.
A young girl was singing quite well here and it was very pleasant, except for the ever-present smokers.
This guy's adorable kids kept sneaking away from their table and going up in front of the singer to dance. He'd let them do it for awhile and then go gather them up. The sign says that the street is one way and cars cannot enter there, only bicycles can.
We stopped for a drink across the same square a few days later.
It was always busy. Here it looks like it's all pedestrian.
But it's not.
Some of you may remember the bollard street I took a picture of from our apartment in Lisbon last year. This street had bollards, too.
Only these little electric tourist cars could go through them.
As I've mentioned before, the kids we saw out in public for the most part were very well behaved. There was not a lot of screaming and yelling and we saw no meltdowns or hissy fits. But that didn't keep them from having a good time. One of these little girls was so fast, she was always a blur.
Here she's a little more in focus.
The day we went to Paul Cezanne's house to see his studio, we went to the tourist information first to figure out how to get there on the bus. I must admit we got distracted by a big touch screen like you see on CNN. Anyway, on the way in, we saw these guys on the porch. We spoke to them in English. When we came out to get our bus, there were set up outside. There were actually 4 of them.
One was having a little more luck than the others reeling in potential Mormons.
After we visited Cezanne's studio, we walked to the location where he set up to paint Mont St. Victoire so many times. We got lucky by arriving at the house just in time for an English language discussion of his work and the studio. You don't really get to see the house itself except from outside.
Here are our pictures of his beloved subject.
Well, maybe one picture is of his beloved subject. I've always liked his work and feel like I have a special connection with Paul Cezanne because we share our birthdays.
Like most French towns, there are regular public markets. We missed the Aix one on Saturday because we were driving somewhere else. But we did make it to the one the following Tuesday. These exhausted shoppers were taking a break at the statue of the King Rene.
Trout was sitting waiting for me one day in Paris. His French is minimal, but he did understand when a woman went by and jokingly said, "marche, marche, marche." That can mean walk, walk, walk or shop, shop, shop or market, market, market or bargain, bargain, bargain or maybe all of those things at once.
While I was getting money at an ATM, he went down this little passage. Yeah, it's one of the spots for tour groups to hit. It was too dangerous for us to go into this cheese and wine shop.
We noticed this narrow street to the right and Trout just had to see where it went.
Pretty tight quarters for cars.
I don't know how you can get around this corner.
On the whole, Aix was very clean. That was because they picked up garbage every day. Yes, even on Sundays. And they washed down the streets every day. But there was no way even their small garbage trucks could get down this street, especially if there were cars parked on it.
Before we got serious about seeing the market, we had to have a coffee at this sidewalk restaurant, Les Deux Garcons. It dates from 1792 and is right on the major street, the Cours Mirabeau. Behind Trout you can faintly see the market stalls giving their siren call to me.
As is typical in most European outdoor markets, you can buy lots of different things. Here there are clothes, but I wasn't interested in clothes.
I was interested in linens.
And tablecloths.
And fabrics.
While I was joyfully distracted, Trout found the food. This was my favorite olive vendor.
And these locally grown lettuces and carrots were too beautiful to eat.
Dried beans are always a market item. Look at all the different kinds.
This spice vendor had just about anything you could want.
I was surprised to see the prepared paella, but I shouldn't have been. One of the great things about Provence is the blending of French, Italian and Spanish cuisine.
What can I say? It's a guy thing.
I haven't talked much about the food on this trip except in the few cases where it was bad. We had good food in most places. Some of them were restaurants or brasseries or bistros that I had read were good. Some we just stumbled on. This place was one of the former and it was where we ate our last evening in Aix. It's called Le Patio and is so nondescript from the outside that you could easily miss it.
I ordered off the blackboard. Trout ordered off the carte. The woman in this picture was super-friendly and took our pictures later. We were both typically early American eaters. We were there at 7:30 when the place opened for dinner. By 8:30, all but one table was full.
Remember, this is France. This is one of the owner's dogs below a stone sink next to our table.
Here's that one doing down dog.
This one slept part of the time.
Then Trout started feeding it.
In some of my research people talked about how hard it was to get into Aix, how much traffic there was and how there was no parking. We found it pretty easy and found 3 garages within easy walking distance of our apartment. It wasn't cheap, but we took the car in and out in from one the whole time we were there except for the last night when we parked closer to where we had to return the car.
If you read the previous posts, you know that the worst traffic we encountered was in Arles. I had printed up Google maps of Aix, but with any city or town, those are only good up to a point. That point is when you take a wrong turn and keep getting more and more wrong until you can find yourself on the map. We've found that the best answer for that is to follow the "centre ville" signs until we find ourselves. In preparation I do a lot of online looking and map looking and frequently recognize where we are from that as opposed to finding us on the map.
Now you ask, why don't we use GPS? I'm a big picture person and GPS is focused at the micro level. Plus neither of us likes being talked to. We are not auditory learners. And another excuse is that in most of the places we have driven in Europe, the turns come up so quickly that the babe can't get the words out of her little electronic mouth before we are past the place we were supposed to turn.
We are heading for the homestretch now. Only 3 more posts and I'll be done with the France 2012 trip. The places they cover are the side trips we, mostly I, wanted to make from Aix and they do not include Avignon or Arles.
