Aix en Provence

This weekend CEA took us all to Aix en Provence. We left early Saturday morning and arrived in Aix around 11:00 AM. It was about a 3 hour bus ride. When we got there, we were greeted by our tour guide (she was American too). It was a really quaint city. We walked around for about 90 minutes and saw the outdoor markets (food, clothing, flowers) and we also saw the historic sites and some churches. We then went to the studio of a famous French impressionist painter, Paul Cezanne. We got a full briefing on his life and the preservation of his studio. After that we checked into our little hotel. Ana and I had some free time so we went back to the main drag and shopped a bit. Ana bought a really nice purse from Long Champ, it's apparently a really classy French-made bag, they run about 70 euros for the medium size bag. Three other girls from our group also got bags from there. Apparently I have been out of the handbag loop. We went to a really nice bakery and I had brioche (it's like a buttery bread, kind of like the rolls from Spring Creek Barbecue). All the bakeries had their cute easter candies out, but I resisted (for now). Then our group met up for dinner with the Paris CEA kids. There were about 60 of us in total, we had to reserve an entire restaurant. We had a nice 3-course meal; first, we had roasted eggplant with goat cheese and a green salad with a dijon vinagrette dressing, then we had roasted chicken with carrots and gratin dauphinoise, and for dessert we had a chocolate mousse thing with raspberry. Today we got up and had a nice little breakfast at the hotel before heading to the Sainte Victoire Mountains for a hike. These mountains were portrayed in 67 of Cezanne's paintings, and this area of France is in love with that painter! Everything is named after him. We watched a video of the topographical changes of the mountain since the dinosaurs roamed in the area, and then we wandered around this little museum about the mountains. It had some fossilized dinosaur eggs on display. The place was also interesting because it had donkeys out back that you could rent to take up the mountain. It was a nice hike because of the view, but it was pretty hard. It was almost entirely uphill, and I almost died. But, I did make it back safely to Grenoble. One more week of crazy classes then I get a bit of a slow week before spring break!