Aix-en-Provence

Aix-en-Provence, France

In future I’m not going to announce our plans for tomorrow, for invariably we change our minds!

This morning, after a fairly wakeful night, we decided that instead of driving to Trets we’d bus and train to Aix en Provence. It was a beautiful day, so we enjoyed the views and took a more relaxed approach to our travels.

Look, we found a park!!! We then had time to call in for a noisette and espresso! Crazy what these Claytons find to celebrate.

Aix is a bustling, but very pretty place. Gaugin was born there, where his father was a local hatmaker – as I’m sure you already knew! There is a large exhibition of Gaugin’s work starting tomorrow!

We lunched under the trees, then headed to a cafe for coffees.

We got back to Aubagne right on 4pm, so had the delight of sharing our ride to Auriol with about 100 school kids! We could have been in any country. The teenage boys were showing off with their poorly developed macho ways and the girls shrieked and giggled! We did manage to get seats for about half the trip.

As we arrived in Auriol, we spotted some boules teams playing in the town square (where the markets are) and we wondered if it is a regular occurrence. The men were playing, very seriously, and families were scattered around the cafe, watching.

We collected our beautifully parked car, and both confessed to each other that we had worried if we’d been there too long and would therefore be clamped etc, but all was well.

A quick trip to the supermarket to buy some duck and cognac – I’m attempting magret du canard tomorrow! Just a ham and vege omelette tonight to use up the scraps. Plus a good chateau picon!

Au revoir!