Escape from Grey Gardens

I'm making goofy little videos as a means of organizing my photos and to trigger the odd narrative and/or description. I did the Amalfi trip first since I wanted to thank SlowTrav, but now I'm getting down to chronological order, so first stop is Aix.

But first, a correction: I mis-remembered and therefore grossly mis-spelled the name of our driver from Benvenuto limos. It's Savario (Severio? agh), not "Salvio," spiacente. I'll fix the video later.

[Saverio: ***fixed, 8/6/07***]

To me the best thing about Aix was Maison de Carlotta, where we stayed (my review is pending on ST) and our lovely hostesses Aline and Carlotta. We had some pretty good meals and a couple of nice long walks, did the little orientation tour on the goofy cars made out to look like a train, visited the cathedral, and especially liked the Musée Granet, where the finds of the afternoon spent there were the landscapes painted by the namesake himself, François Marius Granet. We had lunch and another time a coffee with Kathy, wine and nibbles with Aline and some other guests, went to a street market where Gary purchased an anvil (yes, an ANVIL, and although it is a wee, jeweler's one, and came in handy for opening a bottle of wine one night when we didn't have a corkscrew and were a little desperate, he thereby lost the right to bitch about carrying luggage in perpetuity). All in all, Aix was a nice town; mainly we chose it because the conference was there. That said, I wish we'd stayed in Arles at least part of the week. We didn't want a car so commuting to the conference would have been a hardship, but without staying in an apartment (and thus unable to shop for and prepare food, which, from the lucious looks of the markets, would have been great fun) we got the tiniest bit tired of Aix by the end of the week. Part of that had to do with the general jetlag of the first few days no matter where one goes, and I certainly would recommend Aix to others, just not for a full week unless you had a car and/or an apartment and/or alot of €s (it was pretty darn expensive) or were attending a music festival. We did stumble into a couple of free concerts, and that was nice, but the schedule of conference and meals with co-panelists plus a couple of day trips away didn't really give us much time to seek those out, and they were pretty crowded.

If I were a Cezanne fan I could have walked around locating the various plaques (Cezanne was baptised here; Cezanne ate lunch here; Cezanne sat here and painted Mt. St-Victoire 1800 times) and hiked up to his studio, but...confession...I'm not much of a fan. I'll take Van Gogh over him any day. Actually, I'll take Italian Renaiassance painting over all those impressionist and post-impressionist fellas...sorry. And there are no Cezanne paintings in Cezanne's studio (there a few in the Granet). I think you need to be a bit in love to walk around reading plaques and trek up a steep hill to see his smock. Maison de Carlotta was his wife's house, apparently; that was Cezanne enough pour moi. Plus, we had the Musée d'Orsay planned for the next week in Paris.

The video might require a tiny bit of information. I've explained the anvil at the end. I framed it with fountains since Aix is known as a city of fountains. The big rotunda one is impressive, but I liked the smaller and kind of clumsy "four dolphins" one better. There were more, but for some reason, even though we crossed over it or walked up or down it daily, I didn't take any photos of the Cours Mirabeau. Hélas. The note of lethargy in the pace is pretty much a reaction to doing quite a bit of resting. More on that below.

The blue moose is Lester, who comes on every trip I make. He's been to Europe 4 times. He wanted a beret since this was his first time in France, but I couldn't find one wee enough for him, so we made a substitute (please never tell him he's wearing a cotton swab; he'd be very embarrassed).

Napping: for some reason this trip, I got irritated by all the napping. Maybe I was just jealous. I can't nap. If I do, I can't wake up, so the rest of the day is shot, and then I'm wide awake at 3:00 AM. Now I'm perfectly capable of going out on my own while Gary naps, and usually that's just what I do, but I wanted company sometimes. what there was to do, after we'd seen the sights, was just walk, or sit at a café and read and people watch. Both of these things are more fun with someone. So I pouted a bit over the napping. I wanted to go to Arles! To Avignon! Etc. Aix seemed to me to be about eating rich food and falling asleep between visits to the bancomat. That's probably what I'll remember, that kind of lingering impression, years in the future. That, and recalling the passage from Madame Bovary where she is restless and finds her surroundings overly "placid." But balance that with Maison de Carlotta, a little piece of heaven.

The napping continued in Italy, and in fact intensified when we stayed with friends in Proceno, both of whom are also nappers. I think for the next trip I'm going to research and make plans for Things Only Trish Wants to Do while Others Nap. Lester, by the way, naps a whole heck of a lot. Okay, enough with the prickliness.

We did go to Cassis and Arles and St. Remy, and I'll talk about those next entry.