Aix-en-Provence
Here we are in Aix-en-Provence, the town of Cezanne. And they actually have some of his work here.
Aix, by comparison to other towns we have visited, seems rather boring but we have been here for just a few hours. There is a Cezanne exhibition at one of the galleries that we will check out tomorrow.
The the greatest interest this afternoon was driving by the back roads across classic French countryside.
We have programmed the car direction finding person 'madam butterfly' to avoid main roads. It's a Citroen C4 diesel with built-in navigation. Madam butterfly is not always accurate and makes some really silly suggestions like: 'When possible do a U-turn' when travelling down a one way street in the correct direction.
But she can be criticised without chucking the map out of the window or screaming back.
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Aix-en-Provence
Oh dear, the hotel room is good with its own kitchen and consequently we had a nice breakfast from ingredients purchased at the supermarket yesterday. But Aix hasn’t improved. Maybe it’s the weather.
It’s a University town and there are lots of young people of student age about. Our hotel has quite high security with steel shutters and we are given to understand that this is necessary. The car is locked away in the car park in the basement. We’re here for a couple of days. We’ve looked in at the cathedral and walked all around the town wondering what the fuss is about. There is a Cezanne trail that we followed through the old town but we haven’t been to see the quarry where he worked or other such destinations.
The Cezanne exhibition turned out to be very popular despite a high ticket price. Wendy was holding our tickets and some woman demanded to see mine and got frustrated that I couldn't respond in French. The exhibition was worthwhile particularly as it was pouring down outside. It included some nice Cezanne watercolours and an interesting Van Gough as well as Renoir, Modigliani and Soutine. It was from the private collection of the American Henry Pearlman and is certainly impressive in the hands of an individual collector but it wasn't really a proper Cezanne exhibition with representative works from different periods and media. There was none of his heavy impasto, for example.
We had imagined that Aix would be a good base for exploring some small villages in the region and set-out one morning in the car. Unfortunately most of those in our local guide are small working towns of no particular merit. The people are generally quite poor and the longed for café or cute restaurant generally turned out to be a run-down 'greasy spoon' patronised by two or three old men and a dog - literally.
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Towns around Aix
But a couple had some picturesque elements. We needed a better, more selective, guide with just the best one or two, not the one we have from the tourist office in Aix with some twenty or thirty ordinary little regional villages all vying for the tourist Euro with an overblown write-up.