Thursday, January 29, 2009

A walk around Aix

There are a lot of interesting things to see while wandering around Aix.

Any guesses about what this is?



I'll give you a hint: that black circle in the middle was a wheel.

Any guesses?


The green stuff is plastic.

Any guesses?



The answer:


Either someone was careless with their trash, or marauding youths were trying to liven things up. Am I prejudiced against the youths?

One thing I really like about Aix, and France in general, is that you can still see the remnants of a lot of old ads and signs that were painted on buildings back in the day. Like this one that's for shoe polish ...


I think it looks like an ad for mustache wax, but the product says otherwise.

There are also plenty of beautiful historical structures like this clock tower in the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, which was built in 1510. There's an astronomical clock on/in it that was built in 1661, which includes four wooden statues that represent the four seasons. They supposedly change with the seasons, but I'm going to have to verify this. The statue shown in this picture, holding grapes from the harvest is probably (correctly) fall. However, that arm pointing at "14" seems to always point at the "14".


There are also houses that are so old, they lean like the one in this over-exposed shot. But check out that sky!


And Aix has its fair share of cool door-knockers too.


If this were a CSI franchise, you'd be able to zoom in above the middle finger of the knocker and refine the image to see who that is taking the photo -- me, or James.

There are also pretty plants and nice landscaping.


Does anyone know what this plant is?

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