vacances en partance

as i mentioned already, the french calendar is very liberal with vacations. this is why, after two arduous weeks of actual teaching, we had a two-week vacation. most of us (assistants) were too busy settling in to make plans in advance. this turned out to be a mistake, since train prices tend to go up and not down. shocking. we ended up making a quick trip south to provence and the côte d'azur. i'll attempt to summarize the best of each.

aix-en-provence
after leaving a cold, foggy lyon we were happy to arrive an hour and a half later in a warm, sunny aix-en-provence. as we walked out of the train station we were greeted by the lion king song playing from someone's car radio. strange, but we took it as a good omen.

the town of aix-en-provence was lovely, with sunlit trees lining the streets and picturesque yellow and peach colored buildings. i particularly enjoyed their markets (crafts/soaps one day, clothes another day). one day a nice older gentleman personally escorted us to the 'best' bakery in town. regrettably we missed cézanne's studio and presumably a good view of mont st victoire. other than that our stay in aix-en-provence was short but enjoyable. the best, however, was our trip that took us an hour and half away.

cassis
we took a bus ride down to the tiny town of cassis, where we were dropped at a random bus stop halfway down to the waterfront. it was a very cute little town of small shops, bakeries and restaurants leading up to the boat-lined harbor. a bit like annapolis except that you're on the mediterranean rather than the chesapeake bay.

from the downtown we walked about 30 minutes until we reached the starting point of our hike through the calanques, which are "a geologic formation in the form of a deep valley with steep sides, typically of limestone in part submerged by the sea. it can be considered a mediterranean fjord." we hiked up for about half an hour before we stopped for our typical lunch (comprised of grocery store, bakery and hostel breakfast goodies. total cost: 2.08 €) on a rock overlooking the sea.

we continued on until we reached the bottom of one calanques where we found families swimming and playing in shallow green water. we hiked up (there was a lot of up and down) where we had beautiful views of the white cliffs, blue-green water and little boats below. it was pretty amazing. we even made it to the 'calanque d'en vau' (though one man adamantly explained that we wouldn't reach it) which seems to be one of the most oft-photographed.

we got incredibly lucky with the weather - apparently the next day it started raining and didn't stop for several days - which was a perfect mix of sun and clouds. and now we can officially say we've been calanque-ing. after we got back into town we capped off the day by watching some boules (pétanques, here) in the park before we caught our bus home.

that's all for now, more on the other half of our trip next time --