Aix, Marseille and Mount Ventoux

Salut!

We've just had a week in Aix-en-Provence and boy what a place. It's a university town, with a very large "old quarter" and so much history, from Roman baths to the Counts of Provence (including Jane's ancestor, more on that a bit later) to the famous French impressionist painter Paul Cezanne.

A highlight from the week was our day trip to Marseille. It's France's second biggest city, sits beautifully on the Mediterranean coast surrounded by scenic mountains, and is a mixture of so much, with a strong African influence with the food and people, and modern buildings with architectural flair amongst ancient forts, palaces, and churches. Below is a photo I took of the new MuCEM museum with the sun setting just as we were making our way back to the car.

Below is another photo taken towards the end of the day. That's the 12th-century Fort St Jean in the foreground and Marseille's amazing harbor behind it.

We had promised Sophie an ice cream at some stage and of course Connor had to have one too...

The harbor is the city's centre piece, and probably has been since the Phocaeans landed here in 600 BC....

Back in Aix, .....here is a statue of the man himself Paul Cezanne. I visited the studio that he used during the last years of his life. It was a memorable experience. It was just the guide and I. It felt like this lovely lady was showing me her father's painting studio while he was out of town. The studio is basically untouched since the day he died. His coats were hanging on the wall, the vases that you see in many of his still lives were there, and you can see some of the blue paint along on the bottom of his easel from when he painted his famous The Bathers series, just before he died.

Cezanne painted Mount Saint-Victoire many times. It sits there majestically about 20 kms out of Aix. I strolled up to the Painters' Ground which is about 30 minutes walk from the centre of town, it was where Cezanne would often go to paint Saint-Victoire. This was one of his paintings of the mountain......

And this was the view of the Saint-Victoire from the Painters Ground...

That same day we drove out to the base of Saint-Victoire and had a little picnic, beautiful spot. At this point the kids were sick of having their photo taken, hence no smiles for the camera from those two. We met a French guy there who I'd say was about 50 years old and he had just returned from walking to the top of the mountain and back in one and a half hours! He does it two or three times a week, inspiring stuff.

 

As another example of the amazing scenery in Provence, later that day we headed down to the seaside town of Cassis. It was nice to see the ocean again and wow what a back drop. 

 

We woke up one morning in Aix to see snow again. This photo was taken from our  bedroom balcony. This was totally unexpected as Aix is about an hour south from our place in the Luberon and lower in altitude I imagine. You can see the spire of the Eglise St-Jean-de-Malte in the distance.

The snowfall made the front page of the regional "La Provence" paper as shown below where it says "La neige est annoncée aujourd'hui" or in English, "snow is announced today".

 

Here are the kids in the apartment having some fun. Sophie had put her spare ballerina dress on Connor and they were having a dance, had to take a snap. 

 

 

Back to the  Eglise St-Jean-de-Malte mentioned above. Below is a photo taken of its stunning interior above the altar. According to Jane's family tree Queen Eleanor of Provence is Jane's great (x 18) great grandmother. She appears twice on the family tree, on different sides. Eleanor's father was Raymond Berenguer IV, Count of Provence (1195 – 1245). Looking at the stain glass window below, at the top you have a picture of God the Father, and then just below God on the left is a picture of Raymond Berenguer IV, flanked by Eleanor's sister Beatrice of Provence. Hard to believe I know. It's totally fascinating to me. To think, I married royalty! Well there are just a few generations in between I know :).

And just to the left of the alter is the tomb of Raymond Berengeur IV (on the left), Raymond's father Alfonso II of Provence (in the middle), and Beatrice of Provence (on the right). It's actually a reconstruction as the original was destroyed during the revolution (1789-1799).

Here is a close up of the statue of Raymond Berengeur IV Count of Provence, Jane's great (x 19) grandfather.......

How's this, Raymond had five daughters and each one of them married a king. Eleanor of Provence (pictured below), being one of the daughters, was sent to Britain when she was all of twelve to marry King Henry III of England.

Back to the present day, and here is Sophie (she's eating some cookies we just bought)at the Aix markets whilst we pondered whether to spend 28 euros per kilo on those huge mushrooms you can see. Instead we went for the orange looking mushrooms further up the table on the other side of the avocados, great selection.

We were invited for dinner at the home of the owners of the house we are renting here, Gilles and Louise, and there we met their friends, an American couple, Stan and Ingrid. It was a great night, lovely food, great company, with a highlight definitely being the home made verveine liqueur we had as a night cap. 

The rustic and stylish architecture throughout Aix was a real pleasure to see, here are some examples. This is the Hotel d'Albertas, built in 1707....

 

This is just a random laneway representative of so many through out the town... 

 

The French know how to do doors. This is one of the many along Cours Mirabeau, the famous main avenue of Aix.

Time for a coffee and some sun......

Here are the kids enjoying a ride on Santa's sleigh. Christmas is pretty big in France. About the only difference I can see at this point is Santa goes by the name of  “Père Noël” (Father Christmas), that and the fact that you are meant to have thirteen different deserts on Christmas eve - I'll give it a go :).

 

Jane took this photo of us on Cours Mirabeau with some of the Christmas decorations in the background. I think that was the evening we had some vin chaud, which is that delicious warm red wine that has a bunch of herbs in it along with a good splash of Cognac.

On the way down to Aix we visited the 11th century Abbaye de Silvicane. It was pretty special, as it was totally intact. The acoustics in some of the grand rooms were fantastic, I couldn't help but sing a few operatic tunes, just to test it out. Below is a picture of Jane and Soph having a race in front of the Abbaye, leaving Connor way behind to stare at the fish in this elegant and very long pond fed by a near by spring.

We found the source of the spring about 200 metres from the Abbeye and it made a perfect picnic spot. It was one of the main reasons why they built the Abbeye in this location.

Yesterday we climbed Mount Ventoux, well almost, I'd say we were about 100-200 metres from its 1,900m summit, it was getting late and we didn't want to head back down the mountain in the dark. Mount Ventoux is famous for its inclusion in the Tour de France each year and is the tallest mountain in the Provence region. We met this really nice French guy at about the time we decided to head back, his daughter's boyfriend was a Kiwi! He took this photo of us. Sophie had fallen asleep at that point, big day.

At about 5km from the peak we were not allowed to drive any further, due to the snow and risk of black ice I suppose, so out popped the pram and the back pack. Here is Jane in fine athletic form pushing Soph up the Mount. The scenery was amazing. We could see the setting sun reflecting off the Mediterranean way off in the distance.

On the road up there was so much graffiti from Tour de France spectators showing  support for their favourite teams and riders. For a stretch there we saw a number of kangaroos spray painted on the road. The photo below shows Jane and pram and some of the graffiti...

It was so nice to be out in the wilderness. Where we are on the edge of the Luberon is ideal for us as we have this type of relatively uninhabited country in one direction and "civilization" in the other.

Bye for now.

 

Tous les meilleurs voeux et bonne chance dans le monde (all the best wishes and good luck in the world)

 

Jane, Soph, Connor, et moi

 

It snowed!

Bonjour!

Well, what a morning, I just had to do a blog, it snowed! As you can see in the blog of a couple of weeks ago when we arrived here it was shorts and t-shirt weather. We saw the forecast yesterday for heavy snow, but I was thinking and saying "surely not in the village, maybe in the mountains behind us", where we saw a sprinkling of snow two days ago.

I was like a little kid, up at 4am, had a peak out the window, nothing, 5am, saw a little of what looked like snow, and then at about 6:30am, a winter wonderland! I got Jane up, and then the kids, there was a lot of "wow"s going on. To put the scene into some perspective, I was brought up in sunny Brisbane, Australia and the kids had once seen snow about 100 kms away on some Pyrenees mountaintops a few months ago. I don't know if I have never seen snow quite like this, we were all very excited. Here's some snaps from this morning.....

This was taken first thing in the morning from the back yard, complete with snow flakes falling in the foreground...

This is just after Soph and Connor stepped out onto the snow, for the first time ever...

And of course we had to have a snow fight, here's one in action..

Here is Soph just after she threw a snow ball at me, you can see it in mid-flight heading straight for me!

And another obligatory thing to do when it snows is...... build a snow man of course, here is our attempt, small, but he/she has character I think...

And so I headed out for my usual walk, but this time, the sights, magnificent! I met an English guy who lives in the village, he said there is about four other expats in the village (that's out of about 500 locals). He also said that he has lived here for nearly two years and he has only seen snow like this here once before. We are so lucky to have seen it, and so early in the season...

This is a cute house which sits up against the castle here in the village...

The main street leading into the heart of the village........

Here is a photo from up the mountain a bit on the usual track I take. You can see the castle in the middle of the shot...

Here's another view of the village from a different side, the castle there in the middle again...

 

When I arrived back home I had to take another photo of the house with a bit more light, a memorable morning! I guess we won't be using those sun lounges for a while :). 

Au revoir et bonne chance de nous dans le sud de la France 

Jane, Soph, Connor, et moi

Picnics in Peter Mayle country

Bonjour

The other day we visited Menerbes, about 40 minutes drive from here. It's the town where Peter Mayle wrote his famous book " A Year in Provence". It was absolutely beautiful, your classic rustic, chic, French village. We had a lovely walk around its streets. Here is Jane and Soph, looking out over the Luberon valley from its ancient Place de l'Horloge square.

 

Here they are again enjoying Mernebes....

 

 

And here I am on the other side of the village with the Luberon mountains in the background. Connor is looking a bit serious, not sure why. That back pack has been so handy, especially considering our pram is due for some tyre repairs. Connor gets a much better view from up there too.

 

Here is a cute photo of the two kids standing in front of the door of the 14th century Eglise (church) Saint -Luc which is at one end of Mernebes..

Connor loves a picnic, as you can see in the photo below, when ever we get the esky out, he's a happy man. Even though it's getting colder it's still nice to have the odd picnic in the great outdoors, especially in this beautiful part of the world.

 

 

This was our first "picnic" in Provence, just after we drove through the gorgeous villages of Bonnieux and La Coste. This was the area where a lot of the movie, "A Good Year" directed by Ridley Scott and based on another Peter Mayle book was filmed. It was a cold day, and the day we experienced our first Mistral, which is the infamous strong, cold winds from the northwest that this region of France experiences. The upside is it's usually followed by fresh sunny days. The question is how long the Mistral lasts.

 

This was another picnic we had, just outside of a place called Oppede-le-Vieux. We just parked on the side of the road and picked a spot amongst an olive grove. In the photo up on the hill are the ruins of the 13th century Oppede castle, what a spot, so peaceful and the backdrop wasn't bad either. 

 

One fine day we visited the village of St-Saturnin-les-Apt, only about 20 minutes away, fantastic view...

Sophie, while she has her off days, as we all do, loves school. Looks like she is well liked too. I took the photo below after I dropped her off one day. She and her new friend, Noahlly, came up to the fence to say goodbye. Noahlly invited Sophie around to her home last Saturday for a play.

Have been enjoying my morning walks here. Very different to back in the The Lot, both are spectacular in their own way. Some mornings I head out before the sun rises. The photo below captures that moment just before the sun moves above the horizon, magic time of the day. That's a plane's jet stream across the sky you can see.

 

And about a minute later...... the sun has made its grand entrance...

 

And then looking back across the valley....

 

That same morning, as I was walking back down hill, I cam across this snake, right in the middle of the track. He wasn't going anywhere so I went cross country in order to get around him. I have seen more snakes in France than I have in many years in Australia.  

 

As I walked into our village that morning I took a photo (below) of the 17th century castle which is now the town hall, or the marie as they call it here. The teacher at Sophie's school told us about a "new residents" meeting at the marie so we went along. We thought it was going to be purely a sit down event to hear heaps of info (in French of course so we would understand bugger all as they speak so quickly) on the village. But no it was a meet and greet with the mayor and councilors there along with some wine and snacks, a fun night.  

 

 

At that new residents meeting a nice young French couple invited us around to their place for dinner the following night. Martin and Roxanne have two little girls with one of them in Sophie's class. They are renovating this huge old 18th century mansion a few kms out of town, selling their little flat in Paris to come down here to do so. They're architects, what an exciting project!  

 

 

Sophie and Connor had a ball playing with their daughter, Sophie dressing up in a ballerina dress..

 

 

This is the old village of Maubec which sits at the foot of the Petit Luberon mountains ....grape vines in the foreground showing their Autumn colours.... 

 

I would love to be able to paint some of these scenes. I came across this great, colourful painting titled "Maubec Vineyards" by a talented artist called Karen Walker. You can see that same church on the left hand side of the photo above.

 

 

Thought I would finish off with this photo of the two wee ones. They're at such a gorgeous age! Really enjoy spending so much time with them. 

 

 

Bonne journee or bonne soiree, what ever is appropriate :).

 

A bientot et meilleurs vœux

Jane, Sophie, Connor, et moi

 

Our new home in Provence

Bonjour,

We've arrived! With all the hype around Provence, I thought there was a chance of some disappointment, but no, this place is beautiful.

We have been lucky to find a great house for our stay, as shown below. We have a lease here until the 31st of March, so five months to soak up Provence. We're in the Luberon area near the town of Apt. You can just see in the photo below some of the mountains behind us.

Below is a photo of us having our first breakfast at the house. A couple of things to note, 1) in the foreground on the left you can see some olives, there are about ten olive trees in the yard, and they're everywhere around the house, it definitely feels like we are close to the Mediterranean  2) the fresh loaf of bread which I bought that morning from the local boulangerie (bakery), which is about fifty metres from the house, very handy, but it does create some risk around maintaining the waistline, and 3) the jar of Vegemite on the table, this is an essential wherever we live. 

 

To give you some perspective, here is a photo looking down at our village from half way up the mountain behind us.

Here is the view out our bedroom window. I think it shows some of that "light" that people talk about so much about when referring to Provence. That "light" that famous artists like Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, and Vincent van Gogh loved so much.

In the afternoon on our first day here we headed up into the mountains to visit Caseneuve, a small hill top village.  A lovely, peaceful place with a fantastic view of the Luberon.

 

Here is Jane and Soph, just hanging out in Caseneuve, watching the world go by. Those are the Luberon mountains you can see in the distance.

On the way down here we stayed overnight in a town called Saint-Affrique so we could visit the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, the home of the king of cheeses, Roquefort. We visited one of the seven producers there, La Societe, it's by far the largest. La Societe producers 70% of the world's supply of this soft, sheeps milk, mouldy blue-green veined, absolutely delicious cheese. Of the 70% that La Societe producers, only 30% is exported, that clearly shows how much the French love their cheese.  

 

Here is Jane and the kids as we waited for the tour of the caves to begin. These natural caves is where the Roquefort cheese is impregnated with spores of microscopic mushrooms, Penicillium roqueforti, which results in the blue-green veins, and left to mature.

We were not allowed to take photos of the actual caves, but I sneaked this one in of Soph on the way, heading through one of the entrance tunnels.

To give you an idea of what the maturing caves look like, I took this photo of an old Roquefort advertising campaign poster. In the photo you can see Maurice Astruc,  a Master Refiner of Roquefort, and what he is saying here is " To make Roquefort nature takes its time. Me too." Maurice looks vaguely familiar to me, not sure why, maybe I've seen the add somewhere else .......

Just before Saint- Affrique, we came across the Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world. It's stunning. It's a huge modern looking  cable bridge over the valley of the River Tarn and was designed by the British architect Norman Foster. Jane took this photo on approach.

Here is Connor in the back of Black Betty, supervising the packing up after staying in Saint-Affrique. We couldn't believe we were able to fit all our belongings into the car. Packing the car was like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube. 

On the Wednesday of our last week at La Vallee, Sabina and Mark, the owners of La Vallee, and there two children, Gwen and Keynan, came around for dinner. They brought around some chestnut soup which was lovely and they roasted some chestnuts over an open fire, now they were delicious, so sweet! Sabina took this photo of us four, a happy moment.

I took this photo at the end of the night, it was a lovely way to say goodbye before we left. They were so nice to us,  we feel so appreciative. Thanks for your friendship guys and allowing us to stay in your beautiful house in this special part of the world.

At La Valllee, we saw the seasons change and the effect on the scenery around us was stunning to see. You can see these changes in the following three pictures, looking particularly at the main tree on the edge of that patio area and the hedge on the wall just below it.

When we arrived on the 8th of April this year this was the view out our front door, it seemed like the cold was going to last forever.....

 

 

This was taken one afternoon on about the 10th of July, it was hard to imagine how high the temperatures would reach, eg over 40C in the midst of summer...

 

And below was taken just before we left on the 1st of November, with Autumn well and truly in swing. All up we were there for about six months, we'll treasure the memories.

Jane took this beautiful shot of sunset as we arrived in the Luberon, about five minutes drive before we reached our new home.

Sophie started her first day of school in our new village. The school is all of about fifty metres from our house. We can hear the kids when they're in the playground and we can actually see some of the playground from here, talk about handy. I popped down and waved to Sophie over the fence at morning recess.

Here she is walking down the driveway on the way to school for her first day...

And here she is in front of her new school. At the moment she does the morning session from 9 to 12, comes home for lunch and then heads back for the afternoon session from 1.30 to 4.30. When we picked her up for lunch today she said " I love my new school", what a great start!

We're excited about the coming months in our new home and exploring Provence. Bye for now.

A bientot et bonne sante  

Jane, Soph, Connor et moi