Cultural desert

Today saw us heading to Aix-en-Provence, a rather large city to the south of the region. It’s not a favoured destination of the great-unwashed but rather a university town that gave the world Paul Cezanne and happily held Ernest Hemingway’s attention while he lived and wrote there, drinking and eating at the famous Les Deux Garcons.

So it seems apt to focus on one of Hemingway’s famous quotes as I reflect on the day that has just been: “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know”.

Aix (as it is colloquially known) was once the capital of Provence. It is home to many beautiful features: A cathedral built between the fifth and seventh century, containing 16th Century tapestries and a 15th Century triptych; an Archbishop’s palace with Romanesque cloisters; and the remains of ancient Roman baths.

Each day the city hosts three different markets - a food one (including the first raspberries we have found since we left Paris), a flower market, and a traditional flea market.

So there were plenty of cultural experiences to be had. History lessons to portray to the children. And beautiful architecture at every bend. It was textbook ‘doing Provence’ opportunity.

And this is how it played out.

Place des Precheurs, a large square ringed by a palace, beautiful large eglise, statue to rival Place de la Concorde and an incredibly tempting Hermes shop, was full of construction vehicles, high wire fences and piles of large underground pipes awaiting installation. It was not the promised food market.

Time for a re-think, a quick search of Google maps gave us the location of the flower market. Now flower markets are my absolute dream. If I came back in another life it would certainly be as a florist. I know the hours are terrible (starting the morning at 3am to get to the flower market) and the clientele can be sketchy (imagine all those bridezillas and I’m not sure I’m well placed to deal with grieving families ordering casket flowers) but who wouldn’t want to be surrounded by blooms all day long.  We found said market. It was so windy stall owners were holding on to their market umbrellas and we were far too late in the morning to see the place at its full potential (the florists had been and gone at 4am while we were still sleeping). Lesson number one: Get up early.

After ticking the flea market off our list (I have lost count of how many Provencal tablecloths I have seen in the past two weeks) we headed towards the retail area. Molly was highly excited to find Zara, which she has been desperate to go to since Singapore. I gave in and purchased her a top - which as there was no children’s section had to be an adult’s XS. What I hadn’t quite anticipated was the psychological effect owning a ‘lady size’ would have on her. After wandering around for half an hour swinging her Zara shopping bag over her forearm and twirling her sunglasses in her mouth she had things on her mind and was ready for one of those momentous father/daughter conversations:

Molly: “Do I look like an adult?”
Jamie: “No. But I think that’s a good thing. You don’t want to be an adult yet. Enjoy being a child”
Molly: “That’s good because otherwise people might think I’m a dwarf”.

Ernest Hemingway’s wit and wisdom was already wearing off on us.

It had been an exhausting morning of wandering around and effectively doing nothing. Our batteries needed recharging

The problem being that when there are so many bistrots to choose from, you have children’s fussy needs to take into account, and you are a large group so can’t just take up residence around one of those little French marble-topped tables, finding somewhere to refuel can be challenging. Especially when you’ve left your run too late, the kids have reached vile stage, you’ve used up the emergency baguette you always travel with and you yourself are far too hungry to make decent, if any, decisions. We wandered around for what was probably half an hour with the situation becoming more desperate by the minute.

And finally we had to face the cold hard fact that the best - only - option was the ‘Handburger’ joint (do you like what they did there - they might be burgers but even the fries are house-made). So the children ate chicken nuggets or fish and fries and the adults downed Amercian-style burgers. I even drank a can of Sprite.

We were really soaking up the best of what French culture had to offer.

And then we discovered the shop next door. ‘Les Bonbons D’Aix’. A pirate-themed lolly shop complete with a statue of Johnny Depp from Pirate of the Carribeans at the door and wooden drums oozing with lollies of enticing colours and flavours. I don’t know what it is about things en masse, but even the most mundane of items can look instantly sexy and engaging when presented to you in large volumes.  The children could each choose one type of lolly and we would buy four of each. For Molly the sour spiders, George the football gob stoppers, Matilda lolly necklaces and Hettie the fried eggs(!). It was a holiday highlight of epic proportions. Complete with giant Coca Cola lollies.

By this stage the heavens had opened and Provence rained as it always does in completely over-the-top fashion. Cats and dogs…A mad dash back to the car.

“That was a beautiful city”.
“Yes, very beautiful”.

Hemingway might just be right. Our trip to Aix had been far from intelligent…the best the city had to offer was still there waiting for us. But we had lollies.  Happiness in a pink pirate-themed paper bag.

Aix is going to have to stay on our list of places to visit. We’ll try harder next time.