Tag Archives: Aix en Provence

Aug8

The Musee Granet

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Tuesday, 09-July-2024


The two main attractions of Aix en Provence were the Méjanes library, and the Musee Granet.

The library was just a “walk up and check it out” situation, so we visited it first, after finding suitable parking… but the Musee, well, we had a feeling it may be a bit more of an adventure. We found some food, steeled ourselves, and charged inward to glorious art!



There was a lot of art.

Three floors of art, if I recall correctly, complete with a cool sub-basement that held (as is tradition) my favorite pieces in the museum. Not the most famous, or the weirdest, but definitely my favorites.

It was lovely; the main gallery was primarily religious, which isn’t quite my jam, but it was definitely interesting walking through and reading about all the details – Everything was purely in French, so I’ll include my translation-photos along for clarification. Of interesting note – one of the paintings, from 1661, is actually the first French portrait of a hunter! Kind of neat, showing how the vocation evolved over time.

Ohh also there was a sculpture of a guy without skin, from a doctor’s office in 1853. So… that’s a thing I’ve seen, now.



We perused, walked, explored, and enjoyed. We were able to make our way pretty much completely through the museum before getting saturated, too, which was a nice change of pace for me… by the time we were getting hungry, we’d finished up and were ready to head back to Cassis for some lovely dinner by the lapping waves.

Aug8

Exploring Aix en Provence and Public Library Les Méjanes

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Tuesday, 09-July-2024


One of the stops on our adventures, a bit away from Cassis, was Aix en Provence.

See, my Mom had seen some interesting articles about spots to visit, and found that a few were in Aix… which would involve a short-ish drive into the countryside, a perfect counterpoint to the general relaxing that we were aiming to do in Cassis itself. We poked around online, locked in two spots to visit, and headed out!


The drive itself was lovely – mainly highways, to be sure, but still through the French countryside. Vineyards, castles, and picturesquely abandoned farmhouses dotted our path. The roadsigns were… vaguely helpful, at least enough that I was mostly able to navigate my way. I did take one major wrong turn on the drive home, but that was it – and thankfully it only added 20min or so to the drive, which wasn’t the worst thing ever.

I’ll put up a few other posts for the main attractions that we visited in Aix, and focus on the town itself here – It wasn’t quite as touristy as Cassis, but that’s really not saying much since Cassis is like 90% tourist, whereas Aix seemed to be 80%. There were lovely bookshops, cool postcard spots, amazing fountains and wide boulevards.

Walking was easy, and the sun was bright… but thankfully there was enough shade (and enough fountains) to keep us cool enough. Food abounded, as did helpful shop owners, and we had an excellent time throughout the day. Heartily recommend!




Now, a quick side note – the Public Library Les Méjanes (Cité du Livre)

It’s gorgeous, and was all the rage on Instagram / Facebook a bit ago. The library facade is a beautiful vertical stack of books; super cool, and super picturesque… and super under construction. I was able to get some pictures, regardless of the workers and barricades and construction trucks, but… not a whole lot, and none as fancy as those that were trending and viral and all those cool terms.

Still – absolutely cool Library, and worth visiting. If only for the excellent selection and neat open-air interior.

Jun10

Spring Break 2014 – TGV Ride to Paris

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Saturday, 24-May-2014

Location: Cassis and  Aix En Provence – traveling to Paris

 

I honestly did not expect Daniel to be this excited about trains when he first brought up the idea of taking the TGV from Cassis to Paris.

To me, it was just another facet of our trip; the most efficient way to get from one area of France to another.  In hindsight, I must have missed a glint in his eye… maybe a subtle grin and shiver of excitement.

Because Daniel?  He loves trains, I learned.

And after riding the TGV, I have to agree.

It wasn’t like any train I’ve ridden in the States – it was fast, quiet, and didn’t stop constantly to let people on and off.  The ride was smooth, and the seats were comfortable.  What was this devilry?   But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  We couldn’t just waltz onto the train carrying our tiny little BMW crossover.  First, we had to return the car.

There’s not really much story to returning the car, actually.  We sort of just returned it.  The drive was unique, I guess, since a BMW Crossover cannot in fact hold five people and their gear comfortably… instead, we sort of packed ourselves below the gear… it was super-safe though, since there was nowhere for us to move, and we were protected by bags in every direction.

But so we returned the car, then walked over to the station and sat down to rest and wait for the train.  I even bought myself a quiche.  Speaking purely in French, no less.

Then, the docents called us all forward, we showed our tickets, and waited at the platform as the train slowly cruised into the station.

 

Packing our bags onto the car was interesting, though not particularly difficult… we had noticeably more luggage than most, but that just meant that it was easier to find room to put it.  And once it was done we sat ourselves into a pair of “facing each other” style seats and locked ourselves down for the journey… Daniel and I did get up to explore the food car for a bit (aww yeah cappuccino and twix bars), but for the most part we chilled, read, and chatted.  And I may have stolen subtle glances at the super-cute French girl sitting next to us.  But since she was playing cards with her parents… I wisely kept my nose shoved into my book.