First anniversary

Actually, we got to Marseille a year and eleven days ago, and we hadn't even found our current apartment a year ago at this time. And the not-so-prompt beginnings of the blog? Well that was just under 10 months ago, but who's counting?

The point is, by some measure, we've been here for a year. So to celebrate our first anniversary in France, we went to Spain!


James had a conference in Barcelona, so I met him there and we stayed a couple of extra days. Museums, beautiful buildings, sites, food (thanks to Ann and Dalen for their recs!), music. It was great!

I took the bus for a cool 60€ round-trip. So what if it took more than eight hours to make what Google calls a 4h33mn drive? It was cheaper than driving and, overall, pretty pleasant.

I had been a little worried about the notification on my ticket that for the comfort of other passengers there would be no eating aboard but, clearly, eating was allowed ...


So I did not feel guilty eating the sandwich I had made, over the bag I had brought it in.

I had not been worried about the other half of the notification on my ticket that there would be no smoking on board. Like the proscription on eating, though, the rule was not strictly enforced. There was smoking on board, but only by the driver and only with his window open. He also sang along in something like harmony with the chorus of Cher's Believe. Not an easy feat when you think about the synthesized vocals in that song. He deserved a cigarette or two.

And at the end of it all an ultra-stylish, but budget hotel was waiting for me.


Day 1 (for me ... James was still conferencing)
Montjuïc
At the base of Monjuïc is the Plaça d'Espanya, which marks the entrance to the pavilions of the International Exhibition of 1929. Right on the Plaça is the Arena de Barcelona, built in 1900 in the Moorish style.


It used to be a bullfighting ring, but is now being turned into a shopping center with the help of that big crane.

Here's a view up the hill to the Palau Nacional, built for the International Exhibition.


The Palau Nacional now houses the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), which is a huge collection of the art from Catalunya from the 11th century to mid-20th century. The coolest part, even though it's generally not one of my favorite periods for art, was the Romanesque collection (11th - 13th centuries). From this link, you can see samples of art from these rooms, but what you'll see doesn't do it justice.

Basically, back in the early 1920s it became apparent that a great deal of art from the Romanesque churches of the region was being sold to foreign collectors. In order to keep the art in Spain, The Board of Museums had it removed from the churches and reconstructed it elsewhere. To do that, the paintings (or what remained of them after 700 years) were cleaned, then covered with lime casein (which seems to be some kind of natural paint?), and then fabric. Apparently this allows the painting (or by a related technique the painting and some of the plaster behind it) to be stuck to the fabric and pulled off the wall. It can then be reattached to a new wall in a different place, which is what you can see at the MNAC.

So as you walk through this section of the museum, they have it set up so that it's like you're walking through these Romanesque churches.

It was cool.

On the way up to the Palau Nacional, you walk by the Metalurgy Pavillion, which has this really cool facade.


You will also walk past the extremely beautiful Mies van der Rohe pavilion.


The original was the German pavilion for the 1929 Exhibition and, following tradition, was torn down after the Exhibition ended. It was rebuilt in the mid-80s.

Here's a view back at the Plaça d'Espanya, most of the tourists cropped from the photo.



Here's another view from the Palau toward Gaudí's Sagrada Familia in the center-left of the picture (which, I'm sad to say, looks like a dying spider with its legs in the air in this picture) and the Torre Agbar, by Jean Nouvel, on the right (the shiny, blue-gray torpedo-shaped tower). The Torre Agbar was supposed to reflect the shapes Gaudí used and at the same time echo the form of the mountains at nearby Montserrat.


On my way home, I stopped by Barcelona's Arc de Triomf, built in the Moorish style for the 1888 Universal Exhibition.


And here's James looking out the back of our room onto the terrace and up at the rooftop of the Pedrera.



Then it was time for dinner. Or almost.

As it turned out Cal Boter, an old-school Catalan place off the beaten track, didn't open for dinner until 9pm. So when we got there at 20h45, we gave our names and went to get an apéro at a nearby bar.

At 9:15 we went back and they were ready for us.


Seared foie gras with roasted peppers and eggplant on a Catalan style flatbread in the foreground and mushrooms stuffed with a salt cod-potato-garlic mixture. Yum!

Filet with porcini mushrooms (not the most attractive of presentations, but mushroomy and beefy and very tender).


Cabrito with roasted potatoes. It was delicious -- even I thought so and I tend not to be fond of the goat.



All accompanied by a Rioja, which we hadn't had for ages, and finished with a coffee. (It just felt a little late to start dessert at 11:30 ... but not for a coffee, if that makes any sense at all.)




Day 2
After a leisurely morning and brunch, we walked along the Port Vell (the old port) over to the Ramblas and wandered up the Ramblas and through the Barri Gotíc. Of course we had to stop at the Mercat de la Boqueria.



Where we got delicious fruit juices: guanabana and dragon fruit.



We went to the Cathedral, Saint Eulalia, which is mostly covered in scaffolding making for a poor picture. However, you can take an elevator up to the roof and walk around on some of that scaffolding.

In Parc Güell we decided to play "Where's Waldolisa?". You probably will find me because as I look at this picture it sort of seems like a good portion of the thousands of other tourists who were at the park cleared out of the frame right at the moment James snapped his picture.



There were so many people there you couldn't really take any pictures of most of the structures without having 100 strangers in the photo. (Seriously, try counting the number of little heads in that photo -- 100 easy!) Besides, those are things you've probably all seen or seen pictures of before. Here are a couple of pictures James took of items less photographed.



The chain links in this gate were soft, not rigid:



After all that sightseeing, and French-speaking (we ran into some tourists who needed help) we needed a snack.

Tapas at Tapaç24. It's a low-key, basement tapas bar owned by a celebrity chef with a much pricier and more famous restaurant to his name. The tapas were very tasty, but the service was extremely poor.



"Bikini" with serrano, mozzarella and truffles.



Croquetes of jamón ibérico.



We also ordered some fried anchovies. However, these never came. And our waiter didn't bother to tell us that they were out until we asked for our check and he noticed that he'd never brought them. Sigh.

Dinner that night was at Ann's recommendation, somoRRostro. The food was fabulous, the restaurant was very attractive and the staff were extremely friendly and poured water and replaced silverware with a flourish. If only I had video.

I do have some more no-flash photos of our food though.

Purple potatoes with marinated mackerel and parmesan mayo.


The 'mayo' was just a smear on the left side of the plate (under the fennel).

Sautéed sepia with toasted rice sprinkles.



"Hake" (and by that I mean monkfish because they ran out of hake) with shitakes, asparagus and sweet garlic.


Monkfish three ways: potatoes, sizzled jamón ibérico and kale.


Chocolate cake (very good) with its foam (an unfortunate mint chocolate) and mango ice cream.


Financier with seasonal fruits and a sweet wine sauce. Also, those little white cubes are marshmallows.



Mmmmmmm ...


Day 3
One thing that was really remarkable about Barcelona was the number of tourists. Now, it's not so surprising that there would be tourists at tourist sights, but the sheer number of tourists, nearly everywhere, was astounding. We were tourists, and it still felt like there were tons of tourists there.

This is a picture of Casa Batlló, and there are about 50 people standing outside in line to get it. It's already open.


We went back to Montjuïc and walked around the outside of the Palau, through the Olympic park and then went to the Miró museum (no photos allowed).

We enjoyed the gardens behind the ethnological museum. As did these other tourists who decided to hang out for a while discussing the ins and outs of lily pads.


We went in the Pedrera, but couldn't go on the roof because of rain. So no close-ups of those chimneys over James' head in that picture out of our hotel.

Since it was not quite 9:00 and too early for dinner, we decided to go to a classical guitar concert in the Basilica Santa Maria del Pí.


And then it was time for dinner.

On a Sunday night at 10:30pm, pretty much nothing is open in Aix. Not so in Barcelona. Things are still hopping.

Fried anchovies.


Pulpo a la plancha with patatas bravas.



But wait, there's more!

As if two people could eat any more (I didn't even include everything -- did I mention that I think we gained weight in Barcelona?), there was still Monday morning before James' flight and my bus. The highlight was another juice drink (and the manchego and serrano we bought for later!).

Blackberry and guava-coconut-vanilla.



So here's to another year!

Les Rush aux Pays d'Aix

April = spring break = visitors = "Bienvenue en Aix", or so the sign here says. (I'm still trying to figure out why it's "en" and not "à" since you go "à" cities and you go "en" countries but that's my non-native speaker intuition talking.)

Our first visitors of the season were my relatives from California who came for their Easter vacation.

I realize now that we took far too few pictures while they were here.

Here they are in the gardens of the Pavillon Vendôme. Note that there are no leaves on the trees -- there were a few, but mostly just buds. About a week later, it was all leafy around here.


Don't they look happy? That was before we made them walk all over the place ...

Like the Cours Mirabeau.

Sam and Jack (and the Diabline -- the funny little electric "bus" on the left that you can flag down if you want a ride) ...



and Suzi, Ben and me (James took the pictures) ...



In Cassis, where we followed the Sentier du Petit Prince on Port Miou ...


Note Sam's smile. She still had energy to run part way back at the end of the walk.

The rest of the day in Cassis doesn't have pictures, which is really too bad because it was sort of an adventure. Actually, it was more the leaving of Cassis that was the adventure, but more about that later.

First there was the wine-tasting at the Clos de la Magdeleine, which had nice wine, but a really unfriendly, glazed-eyed proprietor ... at least the one we met. The man who is smiling in the picture on this website looks way too happy to have anything to do with the woman who did our tasting. She was all doom and gloom with crazy black hair that looked like it might be hiding several pencils, a broom, and maybe even a cat. She didn't like us from the get-go because Sam and Ben, who weren't tasting the wine, didn't come down into the dark cellar -- go figure. We were reprimanded. We only got to taste their white, even though they also make a rosé. And despite what our wine book said about the Clos de la Magdeleine having beautiful grounds, we really have no idea because we weren't allowed to walk around and were ushered back out the gate as quickly as we had come in. Hrumph!

Things got better after a stop in a cafe by the harbor, and a delicious dinner of Breton style crêpes at Le Bonheur Est Dans Le Blé. Mmmmm ... buckwheat galettes!

And then starting with the credit card machine that didn't want to read an American credit card, things went a little south. Like when we pulled into the closed-for-the-night train station just as the 21h10 train was pulling out. We weren't too worried because there was a ticket machine and a 22h20 train so we said goodbye to Les Rush, who headed back toward Grasse in their car, and we waited for the next train.

Here's a frog we saw on the train platform. He reminded us of Aleppo.


Two other people came to wait, and the station agent and some other employee were there if anything went really wrong, until it did and then they were unable or unwilling to help out.

Our train arrived right on time, but didn't pull all the way into the station. The station agent's helper came out of the office and James and I and the other two people waiting, who turned out to be a mother and her 20-something son, went up to the train and tried to get in. I say "tried" because the door wouldn't open. We tried the next door. Still nothing. We tried a door on the next car. Nothing. And then the train started to move. We all thought that it was just pulling into the station from the end of the platform where it had stopped. But no, it just pulled on out of the station. The last train of the night.

We all went into the station agent's office and told him what happened. He didn't believe us but his helper, who had seen the whole thing, backed us up. Eventually he reluctantly called the next stop and they said there was nothing wrong with the train, so too bad for us. No, the SNCF wasn't going to send a bus or shuttle, there were no more trains, there would be no refunded tickets or putting us up overnight because the train malfunctioned -- because it hadn't at the next stop. We were out of luck. So over the course of the next 20 minutes while the agent begrudgingly looked up some things on his computer, the mother got livid and started doing all the yelling we wanted to do but couldn't in French, the son foresaw his firing for not being at work in Toulouse the next day and we contemplated almost certain death on our walk back into town along a dark road where people drive way too fast, where we'd have to find a hotel that we hadn't budgeted for, missed work the next day, and we wished we'd taken Jack and Suzi's offer to drive us back to Aix (even though it was out of their way).

Finally, the station agent shrugged and said there was nothing he could do to which the mother responded with an angry snort and a "Bravo SNCF! Bravo!" And then she turned to her son and said, "well, I guess I'll have to drive you to Marseille" and very politely offered to take us too.

And so began the frenzied car ride, complete with a call from les Rush who had taken a wrong turn and somehow ended up in the dodgy part of Toulon and who, now that they knew we were in a car with a frantically speeding stranger, were worried for our safety too. It's a good thing they called before we got on the motor way because that was when the mother started going almost 140 kph (85 - 90 mph, but it felt a whole lot faster in that car), which was in fact not that far over the speed limit of 130 kph (part of the time -- the rest of the time it was almost 30 kph over the speed limit, but who's counting?).

Then things got really scary when we got to Marseille and they asked us for directions. It turned out they'd never been there before. They were from Toulouse and on holiday in Cassis. I had assumed that since the mom had a car, she lived in Cassis and was likely to know Marseille. In fact, she laughed that she'd have to get out when she dropped us off so she could say she'd been there. Ha!

So let's see ... How do get to the Gare Saint Charles? Well, I can figure it out if we follow the signs to the Centre Ville.

Lucky for all of us, our two weeks in the hotel in Marseille and all the walking around I did came in handy and I knew a way to get to the train station. Not the best way that would get us there with a little extra time before the train left. More like the way that gets you to the train station and forces you to block traffic and get out of the car at a place where you shouldn't have stopped and then run to your train. But we never had to turn around and we didn't get lost. It just wasn't the most efficient way. But we made it home. And the son's train to Toulouse was delayed, so he made it too. At least we assume he did. We know that he hadn't missed his train.

And as it turned out, despite our adventure, we made it back to Aix before Suzi, Jack, Ben and Sam made it back to their B&B in Grasse. The little detour to the wrong side of the tracks in Toulon added over 2.5 extra hours to their trip and they didn't get home until after 1:30. But they say they'd still like to come back to France!

La randonnée -- Refuge Cezanne-Collebasse to the Croix de Provence

As you may remember from the Path of the Painters post, or as you may already know because you're a Cezanneophile, or as you may be learning as you read this (get to the point already, right?), la montagne Sainte-Victoire figures prominently in the landscape of the Pays d'Aix. And after living here for a while, it feels comforting to catch glimpses of it from places in Aix, or to see it when you're on your way to Paris on the TGV, or when you're taking a bus away from Aix to go on another hike. I guess it would be more comforting if you saw it when you were coming home, but it tends to be dark when we're coming home so we don't get to. In any case, Victoire (as I like to call her) is really quite beautiful and whatever magical thing it is about the light at this latitude, it lights up the rock in infinite ways. These two photos were taken about an hour apart: white (left), pink (right).





We decided that for our first outing it would be most fitting to go to Victoire, so we tried to plan said hike. And it was actually looking pretty complicated.

We hadn't been to a bookstore yet because we were told that hiking maps were prohibitively expensive, so I looked online. I found plenty of photos of recent hikes on Sainte-Victoire and plenty of information about Sainte-Victoire and her influence in the works of Cezanne and Picasso, but there was next to nothing about the hiking trails or how to get to the trailheads. Finally, and I don't remember what I ended up searching for, I found Les Amis de Sainte Victoire, which at least had some vague maps of the trails.

Then there was the issue of how to get there. Most of the hikes we've found online (and in the books we have now seen) assume that you have a car and can park at one of les parkings so they don't include ways to get the trailheads by public. However, lucky for people who want to hike Victoire, there's a little shuttle called "La Victorine" that makes several trips a day, everyday, to the north and south sides of Victoire and passes by places where, thanks to Les Amis, we knew there were trailheads. And, it's only the price of a local bus ticket! (Although it has its own, special tickets.)


So, considering that the Victorine site has info about hikes that you can do on Victoire, you might expect it to be very informative about where the stops are in relation to the trailheads. But this map is it.


The website even has a page devoted to info about several hikes, but instead of being explicit about how to get to the trailhead, in the column where the Victorine stop for a particular hike is listed, it says things like quel parking? or "which parking lot?" and arrêt à la demande? or "stop if requested?" Those little question marks seem harmless, but if the bus doesn't really know which parking lot to stop in or if it doesn't really stop if requested, that means you're walking several extra kilometers along a non pedestrian friendly road to try to find the trailhead. Then again, you might also expect the website to be informative about where the bus originates, but in fact it just says "La Rotonde" -- a large roundabout with bus stops all the way around, none of which is marked as a Victorine stop.

So I say all that at the risk of sounding like a whinybaby not because it would influence us not to go (on the contrary, it makes it more of an adventure!) but because vagueness in the transportation department is a running theme in our hiking outings. Many schedules are somewhat nebulous here, and I don't mean like the CTA where the posted schedule says the bus is supposed to come every ten minutes, but sometimes you wait 40 and then three buses arrive piggybacked (in fact, here the buses are pretty much right on schedule). It's that the schedules aren't always clear about where the bus picks up, or lets off, and sometimes because the bus doesn't actually exist at all. And yet, knock on wood, we've always made it to where we wanted to go. It seems like everyone is used to the vagueness and no one thinks twice about having to ask other people at the bus stops which bus they're waiting for or where the bus to X is and when it leaves. And I'm talking about locals here, not just tourists. So we ask, and people ask us, and eventually you get where you want to go once you ask the right person the right question.

We knew we were off to a good start when it was a beautiful, sunny day and, more importantly, when we found La Victorine parked at La Rotonde and the driver was nice enough to point to the actual bus stop where she'd pick up passengers. (No, even upon closer examination it was not marked as a Victorine stop.) Things got even better when I told the driver that we wanted to get off at one of the "à la demande?" stops and she said it was no problem. Of course, I wasn't totally sure she'd remember, or that I'd recognize it and be able to tell her to stop in case she didn't.

Lucky for us some nice people on the bus overheard me asking another passenger where we were as she was getting off at an unmarked stop. It turned out that the next unmarked stop was ours and that these people were getting off too. Rather than just point us to the trailhead, Geneviève and Gérard invited us to hike with them.

Genevève and Gérard are about 60, live in Aix and have children who are around our age. They're also super fit. They asked us in the beginning if we were pretty experienced because they said that there were parts of the hike that required some athleticism and they told us that if they were going to fast to tell them and we could slow down. It's not that I doubted their fitness or even overestimated my own when they asked those questions, but this turned out to be a hard hike. The trail (the yellow one from the Refuge Cezanne to Colle basse) is, in fact, rated as difficult on this map and that wasn't an exaggeration.

We took that trail up to the crest and then went to le prieuré, or "priory" (which is eventually going to be a spot where hikers can spend the night), and then on to the Croix de Provence (a large cross at the highest point on the western side of Victoire, basically on top of the peak in the pictures above).

There's one part on the yellow trail where you're supposed to climb a chain like you see in this photo, originally posted on the website of Les Amis de Sainte Victoire. This is actually the old chain, but if you click on this link and scroll down a bit, you can see les Amis climbing cheerfully up the current chain which, as the text says, is much improved over the old one because it's heavier and is anchored at points that are off-set so there's less risk of sliding all the way down from the top.

Below one of the pictures, Les Amis say that the chain can be difficult for people who are trying it out for the first time, but they make it up with ease. And that's pretty much what happened with us. Geneviève and Gerard scrambled up like it was a walk in the park and, despite the "new and improved" chain, we took the alternate route (marked on the map with yellow dots) that circumvents the chain. I thought they might like to split up at that point, but they didn't and when we got to the top, we all had a nice picnic lunch together and they pointed out other landmarks that you can see from Victoire.


This view is toward the north. Off to the northeast (right side of the panorama) you can see the snow-covered Alps. (This was at the end of January.) Then the range in the distance in the center-right should be the mountains of the upper Var, and the range on the left of the picture are the mountains of the Luberon (where we will definitely go hiking). The snow covered peak off in the distance on the left is the Mourre Negre (in Provençal, mourre = face/snout/muzzle and negre = black) the highest peak in the Luberon. In the bottom left of the picture, you can just see a little bit of lake which is Lac Bimont. So now you can look this up on a map if you're so inclined.

Here we are at the Croix de Provence, Alps behind us in the distance.


There are lots of hiking trails to Victoire from surrounding towns and villages, and you can even walk to the Croix de Provence from Aix. There are plenty of hiking trails on the mountain itself, or rock-climbing if that's more your speed.

All the hiking around here is great and Geneviève and Gérard gave us some great tips about other areas to go hiking (some of which we've already visited), as well as the name of those guidebooks which make getting there a lot easier ... at least as far as finding the trailhead is concerned. Getting there by public remains a different matter, but we've been able to go hiking almost every weekend since the end of January.

So more posts to come about other hikes, and with more photos next time -- Geneviève and Gérard's half-jog up Sainte Victoire didn't leave much time for photos!