Provence

Bon Soir, mes amis

This will be short becaus the further south I hqve travelled, the crazier the keyboards have gotten.

We finished off our time in Paris with a relaxed day of lunch under the Eiffel Tower and then strolling along the Champs Elysee and side streets where we got to gaze quite adoringly through the shop windows along Rue du Montaigne. For those playing the home game, Montaigne invented the essay, and now has a high-end shopping district named after him in Paris. WTF. Moving on. For our final day up north, we headed to Versailles to take in the Chateau. I was a bit shocked to discover that the town of Versailles is in no way distinct from the city of Paris, but is basically a small suburb West of the city.The town, though, is quite quaint and pleasant. The Chateau is incredible, as well, if you can get past the school groups and hoardes of people. I think Versailles will stick with me the most simply because the events that occured there lmiterally changed the course of republican governments in the Western world. Marie Antoinette's private quarters and personal hamlet (no joke) are also a site to be seen. We then treated ourselves to a horribly expensive cocktail at the Astoria-owned hotel in Versailles before returning to Paris for our final dinner at a very chic bistro just about 3 blocks from the eiffel tower. A perfect enf to a crazy week in Paris.

I am currently sitting in sunny Aix-en-Provence, a beautiful town of just over 100,000 people about " hours south of Paris by high speed train and 40 minutes north of Marseilles by commuter train. We arrived here yesterday afternoon to beautiful clear skies and perfect temperatures, and once we were checked into our hotel, we quickly set about exploring the area. Aix is bizzare. Its not the tucked-away, isolated farming village I imagined it would be in the least. Its definitely a tourist town with a nu,ber of trains arriving daily from major metropolitain centres around France. Nonetheless, parts of the town come off quite museum-like, draiwing on the areas incredible past as both part of the Roman Empire and one of the first sites at which Christianity was formally practiced. As soon as you get into the side streets, though, and away from the 'main drags,' so to speak, the town changes quite dramatically. On the tiny, winding streets that cut between the old-world apartment blocks, you're just as likely to find Dolce and Gabbana, Fendi, and Dior as you are to find traditional boulangeries and charcutries. On the other side of town is a thoroughly modern shopping area and the future site of the Aix interpretive centre, La Rotonde, with a number of high end shops and boutiques. The people here are very friendly and, I suspect, very accustomed to broken attempts at French like I often venture and are often quite able to help you in English. Regardless, I will continue to soldier on with my terrible knowledge of French.

The country surrounding Aix and the other Rhone villages is quite spectacular. South of Paris, the countryside is very lush and dotted with banks of low hills and small farming villages. As you approach Marseille, though, the vegetation gets lower and scrubbier very fast, the hills rise to exposed faces of rock and the skies clear off beautifully. In turn, Aix and Marseille are full-blown Mediterranean climates with low vegetation, hot, dry summers, and lots of warm-weather produce. We will be setting out to explore more of the region of Provence tomorrow and the day after with excursions to Avignon (of school song fame) and Arles before relaxing in Aix for a couple days to prepare for the long journey home via Frankfurt. Will updqte again soon and upload qaton of pictures once I get home. Tah for now