Une Dimanche Divine: Le Vide-Grenier and Mont St. Victoire

For Journees du Patrimoine, Aix has an annual Vide-Grenier (attic cleaning) aka flea market on the long street of Cours Sextius (also home to our most favorite dancing spot IPN). As far as the eye can see, tables and tarps are set up with junk ranging from 17th century French literature to Pokemon cards and Moon Boots.  We got to haggle in French and find some really cool little tchotckes to have as keepsakes from our time in Aix.  I bought this little leather wallet with someone's initials on it (now forever will I wonder who is R.S.?) and one of the famous French keys, the heavy keys with long shafts and intricate, unique teeth at the end.  They really had a ton of random stuff: a stuffed beaver, medals of honor, lots of jewelry, clothes, children's toys, pocket watches, chips from Monaco's Monte Carlo casino, this thing that could have been either a paperweight or an old small missile/ really large bullet, books, old photos, furniture and antiques, metal signs advertising Orangina and Perrier, china dishes and tea sets, and more. Our dinner family had a table set up but we couldn't find them. Most of the people had brought picnic lunches with wine glasses and bread included, and sat chatting with the neighboring salesfamily.  Kids were playing with the toys in the streets and driving around remote control cars to the dismay of unlucky passersby, who had their toes stubbed with frequency. At the end of the street there were lots of old French cars, restored and painted bright gaudy colors of turqoise and light beige, which were giving tours of the city and continually driving past my apartment window with new passengers.

After exploring Le Vide-Grenier, I went with two other girls to Mont St. Victoire, a small mountain range just fifteen minutes outside of Aix. There we climbed up the hills of Cezanne's works for an hour, getting very tired and worn out along the way. The hills were steep, and we sort of veered off the path and decided to make our own. Not so fun for getting down, as we basically slid our way down pebbles and pine needles and got our hands completely shredded and nearly fell all the way down the mountain, but we luckily made it and after a hard core run to catch the bus we made it back to Aix. The view from St. Victoire was amazing, we'd be climbing and completely focused on our feet and not dislodging the rocks and then stop to look up for a moment and see this vast swath of land, a little hazy, full of hues of green and orangy red of the mountains, and we saw a few speckled houses in and out of the trees far off and the cloudy sky and the mountains descending straight down into the abyss of trees below, it was very pretty.  We all agreed we must return.  There's a six hour hike you can do to reach the tallest peak of the range, though I think I may skip that. Hiking's hard!! But overall it was very fun and worthwhile, good exercice, great view, very rewarding.