2019 Euro Trip – Aix-en-Provence
After the British Airways shitshow, we checked into our hotel 1.5 km outside the old town center of Aix-en-Provence, about 30 miles north of Marseilles and the Mediterranean Sea. Breathing a sigh of relief, we found our Eurail passes waiting for us at the front desk as I planned, one disaster averted!
Aix-en-Provence, pronounced “X on Provonce”, was founded by the Roman consul Sextius Calvinus in 123 BC and it has retained its character ever since with beautifully preserved architecture and fountains everywhere. The town name started as Aquae Sextius (Hot water springs of Sextius) and morphed through the years to the Aix we have today. It was of course pillaged by Visigoths, Franks, Lombards, Saracens and the Franks again. Through all of this, the region was an independent and respected center of arts and learning. The Crown of France took all of Provence in 1487.
One of the city’s claims to fame is the artist Paul Cezanne. He hiked up to a nearby mountain called Mont Sainte-Victorie and painted over 80 works of the mountain and the surrounding area in his Post-Impressionist style (as I’m told…) Although none of his paintings remain in Aix, his home / workshop has been preserved.
Jim and I walked into the old city and bought local SIM cards for our phones and the man in the shop said they would work all across Europe (foreshadowing here). We rested in a bar overlooking a town square and fountain, launching in on our consumption of the local specialty, dry rosé wine, and yes it’s good, not too sweet! The people watching is great, people here are very stylish dressers and dozens of happy dogs are always out for walkies. One downside is the French stereotype holds true that *everybody* smokes, it was pretty much unavoidable for me.
We signed up for a wine tasting tour for the next day, went back to the hotel and slept for 5 badly needed hours. We went back into town again after dark, discovering the very handy #8 bus that goes from close to the hotel right into the old city center for â¬1.20. While we were waiting, we noticed that a plastic dumpster across the street caught on fire, we think from a not-fully-out cigarette. I ran across the street to a driver leaving the parking lot and pointed to the fire and asked him to call the fire department. Quite exciting!
By the time we got to town, most everything seemed closed, but we spied through an open restaurant door to some lights out the back, then walked in and found a massive enclosed area with over a thousand people being served by several dozen surrounding restaurants, what a discovery! You just can’t beat the food and drink in this country!
The next morning we headed into town and met up with our tour guide, a Japanese couple and the charming Denise Scarpelli, an American living in Paris who was down for a holiday weekend. We drove up to Mont Sainte-Victorie to see the locations where Cezanne did his painting, employing this mastery of color and light. We then headed to the Domaine Terre De Mistral winery, which of course specializes in dry rosé. Next up was the Mas De Cadenet winery. We then went to the village of Roussillion, with gorgeous red and yellow sandstone cliffs, where the local legend says the color is from the blood of a princess that threw herself off a cliff. We wrapped up the day at Gordes, a Roman town built on a 45 degree slope. It was abandoned for centuries then recently rebuilt by a local family. The excavations are amazing including the discovery of caves with donkey-driven olive oil presses. After the trip we invited Denise to share some huge pizzas and more rosé and we had a great conversation about our travels.
The next day we bought our train ticket to Avignon and I walked to the Tesla showroom on the outskirts of the city. I won’t bore you with the details here, I’ll post a video on my YouTube channel. We headed back into the old city and found the flourishing Sunday markets in the heart of the old town, selling everything from the famous local lavender to clothes to furniture and of course food.
Tomorrow is the ride to Avignon, so a quick pizza for dinner and back to the hotel to prepare.
