aix-en-provence, concluded

Finally got Blogger to like me again!

We walked outside of town to Paul Cezanne's workshop. Couldn't take photos inside. It was just one room, but all the stuff inside was preserved as it was at his death; objects for still lifes, coat and hat hanging on the wall, bag for his lunch. I was impressed. Of course, I know less than nothing about Cezanne, but I didn't let that get in the way of the cool. Then we walked (and got lost, and got lost, and finally found it, and I don't want to talk about how obvious it was really) to this lookout spot from which you can see this mountain that he painted a lot. A lot a lot. Like, 80-something times.

Also, there was this dude sketching a cat, who really couldn't have cared less that he was becoming a muse.







We also took a bus (for free, sort of by accident, but the driver seemed to like us, so it was just as well) to l'Oppidum d'Entremont, which is a Celtic-Ligurian settlement on the top of a hill a few kilometers outside of Aix. I appreciate greatly Mom putting up with my archaeology-geek excitement about this whole deal. Ruins!!! And a grape press, seriously. Walls, stairs, remnants of the town. We almost missed these stairs, but when we saw them, Mom said, We have to go down them. They're really old. So that's that.

Oh! This photo of a blank room with square blocks running down the center. It's a room called the Porch of Skulls, I kid you not. The inhabitants of the town used to display the decapitated heads of enemies on it. What I find most amusing is that the porch of skulls is right in the middle of town, not, say, on the edge, or near the entrance particularly; so who, exactly, are they trying to intimidate? Their children? People windowshopping down the street?









This is a candy shop, clearly. It was a candy shop taken to the nth degree, though. They had baskets and baskets of cookies, a wall of chocolates, hard candy, caramels, buckets of things, oh, I don't even know. I wish I had a better picture of it. It was almost a caricature of itself.



Fountains. I like this one with the moss. The other one is the Fountain of the Four Dolphins, which is in the middle of the Quartier Mazarin, the 16th century (I think?) part of town.





We had a picnic for dinner, in our room. We had singularly bad luck with dinners -- everything was closed, or not serving dinner today, or crabby. A lot of crabby. Please ignore Mom's hair. She'll hate me for posting this.



And then we were back in Paris for a day, running around Montmartre, Sacre Coeur, the Eiffel Tower, and then Trocadero at night to see the Eiffel Tower from across the river. Mom sent me some of those pictures, but I'm too lazy to find them.



And then she went home, and I sobbed. Figures.

technical difficulties.

I have no idea what's going on here, but Blogger isn't allowing me to upload any more pictures. Maybe I have reached some sort of heretofore unmentioned, unspecified limit? Anyway, I'm going to load them to another host and then put them up here, but that'll have to wait until after I've gone to the Bibliotheque Publique d'Information at the Centre Georges Pompidou to do some research for my medieval archaeology presentation.

My host family's telephone has the most annoying telephone I've ever heard. Just sayin'.

aix-en-provence, part the first

So I have a great backlog of photos to post. I'm going to go in order, I suppose; so here's Aix-en-Provence, from when Mom came to visit me in mid-April. We took the TGV to Aix, which is, oh, not particularly far from Marseille, but inland in Provence. It was really quite beautiful, fountains every other block, smelled like lavender.

Sorry for the sideways. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

The chambre d'hote (guest house) we stayed in was really, really cute. I was nervous about it, because I hadn't even seen pictures of it when I made the reservation; instead I called the Aix tourism office, and they found me a room (for an extra one euro fee; I figured that was money well spent). Turned out to be fabulous, and in the middle of town, no less.

This is some chuch. And its 4th century baptistere. And its cloister. Buildings and fountains.







Fountains, buildings, markets. Tuesdays and Thursdays there were markets everywhere, and they were fabulous. Flower market over here, vegetables over here, down another street local olive oil, honey, herbs, pottery, cheeses. Mom and I bought a bunch of things. There is also a photo here of the Cours Mirabeau, the main street of Aix, with a statue of King Rene (Provencal or Aixois king, I forget) who brought the muscat grape to Aix. He's holding a bunch in his hand. Also, the big fountain at the opposite end of the Cours Mirabeau.







Hmm. I have a bunch more to go, but Blogger isn't letting me upload any more photos. When I can work it out, I have pictures of: Cezanne's workshop, a mountain, ruins of a pre-Roman settlement, and a cat.

i'm back.

I spent the weekend horseback riding around the bay of Mont St. Michel. It was one of the most awesome things I've ever done, and also one of the most painful. By midday Saturday, my knees were in open revolt. I couldn't even tell you how many Advil I've taken today. Pictures will be forthcoming; I have a bunch of those. Also stories. Ask me about the one where we gallop madly along a gravel road through the gorgeous French countryside. And the one where a girl and her horse fall dramatically into a hole in the middle of a river in the middle of the bay area while a thunderstorm is coming up and you can practically hear the Jaws theme playing. Doom doom doom doom doom.

Nobody died, but it was rather a close thing. I'll tell you about it later.

barcelona photos

I have a lot of pictures. I'll get all my spring break stuff up eventually, I promise, but it's going to take a while. For starters, here's some Barcelona. Did you know they speak Catalan there? I didn't. They all speak Castellano too, but due to a history of separatist movements and a big dose of nationalism, speaking primarily Catalan is a big point of pride.

We stayed in a cheap hotel in the Gothic Quarter, near Las Ramblas and not far from the waterfront. Skye's friend Caitlin showed us around a bit and we ate a lot of falafel. I don't really have the energy to go into detail about all of this, so I'm just going to put up the pictures. Barcelona was fun, but we were there for the only four days of bad weather they've had all year.

Out the window of our hotel, looking down towards Las Ramblas:



The entrance to the market off Las Ramblas (fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, entire baby pigs in refrigerated cases, fresh fruit juice, candied pineapples, expensive chocolates, candy in the shape of a fried egg):



The market:



Skye and our fruit juices:



Because the weather was nasty and we couldn't go to the beach, we saw a looooot of Gaudi architecture. This is the interior of the Sagrada Familia, which is not yet completed. A cathedral Gaudi-style:



This is all Sagrada Familia and a view of Barcelona from the top of one of the towers.











Las Ramblas:



Facade of a Gaudi house, La Pedrera:



Roof of said Gaudi house (or properly, apartment building):



Interior courtyard:



And mosaic on a ceiling:



Facade of La Pedrera:



Tapas! Definitely one of the best things about Barcelona:



Parc Guell (Gaudi-designed); the iguana is very famous, apparently. I rather liked him.





A house in Parc Guell, where Gaudi lived for a while but which he did not design:



These tiles are all over Barcelona's streets; they're mockups of tiles Gaudi put in the children's bedroom of at least one apartment in La Pedrera.



The rest of this is Parc Guell and a view of Barcelona towards the Mediterranean.













The beach, overcast:



The waterfront:



The Gaudi house we didn't make it to, Casa Batllo -- we tried, but couldn't find it. I saw it out the window of the airport shuttle the day I was leaving, in a totally obvious location that we just completely missed.



So there! Barcelona. It was cool. But I definitely heard more English, German and Italian than Spanish. Also Catalan -- I am unclear as to why there are so many American students studying Spanish there, since it's definitely a secondary language. Even all the signs and menus are in Catalan.