Aix-en-Provence

Aix-en-Provence was one of the first places that we visited on our trip.  It was a quiet Sunday morning and we were some of the first visitors to hit the city.  The main street that is notoriously wide for streets in Europe and lined with the most beautiful trees.  We wound through older neighborhoods and enjoyed encountering fountain after fountain as we went.  A poet once said of Aix-en-Provence that a blind man walking it’s streets would assume that it is always raining because no matter where you are you can always here the sound of a fountain near by. 

One of the first stops on our tour was an old church built in three different centuries.  Is was quite pretty inside and I loved taking pictures.  I love the way that light filters in through old churches.  There is a peaceful and reflective quality to it, also I love the quiet that you find in a churches.  I’m not very religious but I still find a peace in being in a place where people have come before me for hundreds of years and contemplated their lives.  It makes you feel connected to them in a very odd way.

Then I got yelled at by a priest in French.   Think that it was for taking pictures of the organ but I’m not sure and our whole tour group got kicked out of the church. It is however, far more pleasant and less embarrassing to be yelled at in a language one does not understand.  

Outside the church we wondered a central town square and their local farmers market. It was enjoyable to see how similar the farmers markets here are to the ones at home.  I liked the similarities and differences that made up so much of the trip.  I find those kinds of things fascinating.  It is one of the things I like best about traveling.  Like lampposts, everywhere we go I take pictures of lampposts, I love how they are everywhere, but in each place they are also a little different.   

Finally we wondered through some of the older residential streets and courtyards.  They were peaceful in the early morning.  We bought some local candy flavored with lemons and some with figs.  We stopped in a local market and bought a baguette which we ate sitting on a park bench and feeding pigeons.  We also bought a crape with nutella and lavender flavored gelato.  ( We stopped a bought gelato almost everywhere we went but the lavender gelato on the main street in Aix-en-Provence was some of the best.)