Entries about victoire

Today we woke up at a very reasonable time, nine o'clock. The only unfortunate bit was that we were woken up with a "We have to get moving because we have a really long day ahead of us." But then we decided to discuss our options and chose for a different kind of day. We were going to drive to Aix-en-Provence, and climb a mountain (Montagne Sainte Victoire--a mountain that inspired Paul Cezanne) that was just outside of the town.

Our GPS led us to the town without too many problems, but after that it was a nightmare. The traffic was terrible, and any time that we kind of knew where we were going the street we were supposed to go down was closed. And to make matters worse, our GPS didn't know that the mountain existed. After much frustration we were able to leave the town and decided to stop in a municipal park for the little village of Le Tholodon just outside Aix en Provence for lunch. We ate lunch on a bench inside a small area dedicated to the playing of pétanque.

Eventually,by our own fantastic navigation skills, by two o'clock we were at our destination. Because it was so late in the day we knew that we weren't going to make it to the top, but we wanted to get a little of what we had come for. We had heard that it was supposed to be a cold day, but there was barely a breeze and the sun was shining...and it was quite warm. I happened to be wearing leggings under my jeans to keep warm...not the best idea. After some time of climbing I was so hot I could barely keep going, because I also happened to be wearing the warmest shirt I had brought. But my dad found a place for me to change and I was able to get into cooler clothes. The sky was a pretty blue and there were no clouds to be seen, it was really a beautiful day.

We saw about four people floating with paragliders over the mountain's summit. We ended our hike a short way from the base of the actual mountain, which you could not reach from the side we had approached it on. The wind had started up but we appreciated it in our hot state, and began our walk back down again. It took us a while to find our car because there were so many parking lots, each between 50 and 120 metres away from each other. By the time we did find our car we were content with our days work and were each granted a well deserved drink of water. We started the car ride back and before I knew it I was woken up to be told we were in the grocery store parking lot, ten minutes away from our apartment. Our shopping trip took longer than expected (and we spent more than expected!) but we were able to get the next couple days covered for food. Right when we finished unpacking at home, Hannah started dinner and we were able to eat a nice warm meal of taco-jitas (tacos with fajita sauce). We plan to get to bed early tonight as we are most likely going to be touring many towns tomorrow and it will be a very full day.