Aix - en - Provence and the food

Saturday 31st October
Aix - en - Provence and the food
Gretchen reckoned there was some of that sort of music that kept her awake in the night but I didn’t hear it.We have had some very quiet locations of recent times and well behaved neighbours in next door rooms,if there has been one,so a night with boom boom music is out of the ordinary for us.
It looks as though we will be greeted with fog each morning while we are in Trets as it is that sort of weather pattern with still air,warm days but cool nights.Never mind we are sure it will lift by the time we want to venture out on our sightseeing trip today.
After breakfast we went down to reception to use the laptop on the internet and make some forward reservations beyond our next two short stays.We found that the unsecured connection we were using yesterday had been replaced by a secured one and we needed a password to access it.
Although the sign on the door says reception hours were from 9am to 5pm with a break in the middle of the day there was no one about and the office behind the desk was locked up.It seems the guy who speaks and understands only French from yesterday is either not around or is laying low somewhere.This sort of thing where a service is advertised and then not provided and you can’t find anyone to help has frustrated us on a few occasions on the BBA although they have all been when we have been staying at somewhere other than a place with ‘hotel’in its name.That tells you something and after over 6 months on the road you would think we would have learned our lesson by now and only booked hotels!!There is that old adage ‘what’s ya pay,is what’s ya get’ that we should listen to a bit more often!!
So we abandoned that little plan and instead got RR on the road for our trip to Aix-en-Provence(the Aix is just pronounced as ‘X’).It was only a short drive down the D12, which runs by our accommodation,to the N7 and then 25km to AeP(as it shall become known as).
We had thought the traffic might be even lighter on a Saturday morning, but not so,and it took a couple of minutes to turn onto the N7.The fog generally had lifted but the sky overhead had cloudy “European’look that makes you think it’s all air pollution that is stopping the sun getting through as you can sort of make it out in the murk.
We passed a couple of interesting places on the drive down to AeP including one with a chateau in its name but we shall keep visiting them for Monday when we have a short drive to Marseille airport to take RR back and pick up the rental in the early afternoon.
AeP has that relaxed feel as we drive into it and the road is lined with houses from the 1600’s when the ‘modern’ day town was founded.Large plane trees are a big feature of the town and are on all the streets wide enough to accommodate them and cars in the centre part of town that we visited.Their leaves are now a golden yellow and many of them are dropping which must cause the local street cleaners one hell of a job to clean up after them.
Finding a car park was a breeze and we were soon out walking the streets of this medieval town.
We found a map of the city and decided that all we wanted to see was contained within the central city.So we plotted a course that would take us in a grand circle and back to the parking building.
Everyone on the streets seems to be dressed for winter yet we aren’t finding it that cool yet even though it was showing as 15C on the outside temperature gauge of RR as we pulled into the parking building.Perhaps once they have put their summer clothes away then it’s just winter stuff for them.We want to keep wearing our summer gear as long as we can and make this adventure seem like it’s summer all the way until we go home although we realistically know that winter will probably catch us before we leave Paris at the end of the month.
We strolled down a narrow lane lined with small shops where pedestrians seemed to have the right of way over the couple of cars we did encounter.
Among the shops was one selling absolutely scrummy looking chocolates of all shapes,sizes,colours and fillings.We noted that we must come past this shop on the way back to the parking garage to check it all out a bit more closely and after seeing if there are any more on our trail that might offer even more variety.
Another thing we couldn’t get past in this narrow lane were the aromatic smells emitting from the bread and pastry shops and we had to resist temptation as it wasn’t lunchtime yet.
We soon came upon a large square and the Saturday market with stall’s selling all manner of things that took up the bulk of the area.The stalls were set out in rows,so there was only one thing for it but to stroll up and down each one to take it all in.
After nearly an hour we had explored pretty well all of the square and had made several purchases.Gretchen brought a pair of salad servers made out of olive tree wood.They will have to be declared on the way into NZ but they are nice and smooth and MAF shouldn’t have a problem with them.
Again it was the food that interested us most and it was at a cheese stand where we met “Joe”,a very jovial Frenchman who didn’t speak a lot of English,in fact very little at all,and after a ‘conversation’ that lasted 5 minutes or so we ended up with a slice of local brie and a small piece of very aged(4 years in a cave!!!!)hard cheese.All this after tasting most of what he had on offer.!!Perhaps he was more confused than we were but we ended up getting the very old cheese for nothing.Great for the BBA!!!
We also brought meat for our dinner at a rotisserie chicken stall.We wouldn’t usually be keen on buying chicken,cooked or uncooked, from an open air stall but this place had a red hot rotisserie cooking the chickens and so we thought that any bacteria that might be lurking would be well and truly fired by the heat being generated.We brought a dozen baby chickens that were like small legs(they had a fancy name but we cannot remember it) and also a large sausage that had a Provence name.It will be interesting to try it out tonight!!
At another stall Gretchen brought a small pottle of olives which she is trying to convince me that I would like.Really though the things usually are just too salty for me and she will have full and exclusive rights to them all!!!

It was the most crowded market place we have seen on this adventure and surely one with the most variety for people to buy.
We had more things to see even though the place was so interesting and one could have just found a spot to sit down and be entertained by watching the locals go about their marketplace.
Our path took us down another narrow alleyway to the main throughfare for the town with the largest plane trees we have seen lining the boulevard down to another roundabout with a large statue standing in the middle of it.
Walking down the boulevard Gretchen found a bookshop that looked like it might sell books written in English.She has already got through 3 books on this adventure and needs something to read when we have a bit of down time and there is no English speaking TV.
It’s odd going into a bookshop and asking for books in English and then being referred to “the foreign language section”!!Anyway she found a new Jeffrey Archer novel and at over 300 pages that should see her through the next 4 weeks.
We carried on down to the roundabout and strolled around it. At the far end was a block of brand new shops which seemed quite out of character with the old city we had been walking through but they were just far enough away not to give that awkward mix that can sometimes happen when the old and the new parts of a town meet.
Here too we found another sweet shop and although we were tempted by freebies being handed out to entice us to buy a greater quantity we resisted remembering we had the chocolate shop to visit on the way back to RR.
We completed our circuit at the chocolate shop and purchased two large chocolates filled with Grand Marnier and a bag of orange flavoured macarons after the young lady at the counter gave a sample to try.It’s going to be a grand dinner tonight!!
The weather was still not fully cleared and so we left any more sightseeing until tomorrow in the hope that the sun will be back out in full again.And so we spent the rest of the afternoon after we got back to Trets just being lazy and reading.
Dinner was delicious and the sausage was particularly tasty filled with herbs from the region.The origin of the meat which was quite dark in colour will remain a mystery and perhaps it would best if I didn’t know.!!
The movie tonight was Brokeback Mountain and we both made it through to the end despite the long day,filling and delicious dinner together with a bottle of local bubbles and of course the Grand Mariner filled chocolates!!

---

---