Aix-en-Provence

So, ok, Easter weekend was a great time to go to Aix-en-Provence. Not too crowded and lots going on in the town. If you stop at the tourist office, near the Rotonde, you can pick up maps of the town and information about current happenings. The tourist office also has a ticket office for the touristic buses. The town has a little bit of everything and tons of food and shopping. The thing about these French towns is that the heart of town has always and is always the heart of the town. Old Aix is one of the prettiest down towns I've seen. It has a few museums and dozens of fountains. In Aix you can visit Cezanne's studio, it has none of his work in it, but it is exactly as he left it. There is also a Cezanne museum, which sadly is closed until 2006. A cool feature is these little brass markers in the sidewalks that you can follow to retrace the 'footsteps of Cezanne'. You know, from his house to the bakery he frequented, to his favorite fountain to the alley he took as a shortcut, to... yeah, it was kind of goofy.

The fountain of the Rotonde is on one end of the Cours Mirabeau of the old town and the carousel on the other.

Looking down the Cours Mirabeau, on the left are the stalls of a market. On this weekend it was an artisans market. Lots of handmade soap, leather goods, handmade made clothes, Provencal fabrics and, my favorite, a guy making renditions of peoples faces in wood using just a jigsaw. I wanted one of those really bad.

This carousel is totally awesome, no horses here. Each creature was like something out of a Jules Verne's novel.

This was my favorite, the kids could peddle the fish and make it go up and down. Behind the fish there was a man with wings that the kids could peddle and make flap. One of the creatures was a giant iguana that a kid could sit inside of and look out of its eyes. Steamship, giant beetle, building crane...

...Ostrich, mother goose...It was completely awesome, if I were a kid I would so want to ride it over and over again, until I'd ridden all of the creatures.

As you wander the streets of the old town, you come into squares where various markets are held. There was one that was nothing more than a flee market, but my favorites were the flower markets. I bought a bouquet of 50 beautiful pink ranunculus for 6 euros. This time of year the markets were full of tulips and ranunculus and daffodils and of course every conceivable color of rose.

More flowers.

Go figure that I would be drawn to the flowers.

View down one of the many narrow streets of the old town. (And the back of my head.)

The view from our 'hotel' window. We stayed at a chateau on the edge of town, it was quite lovely, unfortunately it was surrounded by a commercial center.