As a long-time IBMer, I have a hard time pronouncing “Aix” as anything other than the three letters. But here in France, it’s pronounced “X”, and we’re here for a couple of days.

We left the S.S. Catherine a few minutes before 9am (the trip was a delight, and not having to get up hellishly early on the last day so the crew could ready the ship for the next batch of guests was an unalloyed pleasure) and took the short walk to the Arles train station.

The trains ran on time, and we were in Aix a few minutes before noon. The weather was nice, so we walked the ten minutes to the Hôtel Cardinal. We left our luggage with the manager and asked for advice about finding a place to eat – we hadn’t passed any on our walk, and I was worried because it’s Easter. The manager told us to go three blocks to the Cours Mirabeau and promised there’d be many places – he also said that they wouldn’t be gourmet experiences. After a week of Uniworld feasts, that wasn’t a problem!

The first place we saw was an Irish pub, but it didn’t really appeal. There were five other places on that side of the block, all of which looked OK, and we chose Bar Le Grillon, went inside (to avoid the smoke outside) and sat down. Our waitress spoke good English and was able to steer us to the Ravioli with Pistou sauce. After we’d ordered, I looked at Tripadvisor and found lots of complaints about the service and attitude, but fortunately, that wasn’t our experience; our food arrived in just a few minutes, and was good but definitely not gourmet…perfect for today.

We were in a little bit of a hurry because we wanted to reach the Tourist Office before they closed for lunch so that we could pick up the information we needed to do the volksmarch, the “In the Footsteps of Cezanne” year-round event. We got there in plenty of time, got the brochure, and went back to the hotel to officially check in and take our luggage to the room.

We finally were ready to go back to the Tourist Office to start the walk; along the way, we saw a couple of Aix’s many fountains.

We also saw a building with a plaque with Hebrew on it, so we took a closer look.

As far as I could tell, the building had been a shul from 1836 to 1952; it’s now the headquarters of the French Protestant Union – it seemed like an interesting reuse.

Once we got to the Tourist Office, it took us a few minutes to figure out exactly where to start the walk and what road to take, but eventually, we were on our way. I’d downloaded the route into my phone as a GPX file, and it was a good thing – the printed map really wasn’t sufficient for someone unfamiliar with the area to follow. The route took us out of the city and to the banks of the River Arc, where Cezanne painted the landscape and the river. Much of the walk was in a park, and other parts were on narrow winding roads and trails; it was just under 12km and took us nearly three hours.

We returned to the Tourist Office, got our books stamped, and headed back to the hotel to rest for a few minutes before going out in search of dinner. We still weren’t looking for anything fancy, and Tripadvisor suggested Pittz, a Middle Eastern falafel place just off the Court Mirabeau. I wouldn’t make it a regular stop if I lived here, but it was a nice change from heavy European meals.

There’s lots of statuary on the Court Mirabeau.

Before calling it a night, we walked down to the church at the end of our block, the Eglise et Paroisse Saint-Jean-de-Malte. They were holding services there, so we didn’t go in…maybe tomorrow.

Two years ago, I spent a day in Arles with Covid. I missed the ship’s tours, but I did do a good bit of exploring on my own.

Today, I spent the day in Arles without Covid (as far as I know – since I’m feeling perfectly normal, I have no reason to waste a test) and got to enjoy a guided walk through town with Alexia, our guide from yesterday. We started from the dock and walked through Liberation Square and into the old town.

Because it’s Easter Weekend, Arles is having a festival, the Feria des Pascua, complete with bullfights, brass bands, bodegas (bars, not convenience stores), and more; the Ampitheatre (aka the Arena) is the center of the festivities, so we weren’t able to go inside.

The next part of our walk concentrated on van Gogh; we walked past the site of Café Terrace at Night and over to the Hôtel-Dieu, where he was institutionalized for a time.

Arles hosts a huge street market on Saturdays and Diane and I walked over there. It was filled with wonderful smells and colors, cheap clothing, and tons of people – it was also too crowded to take any photos. We’d been warned about pickpockets at the market; they didn’t find us!

We saw a lovely chestnut tree in bloom.

We walked back along the river wall to the ship for lunch, stopping at the train station to pick up tickets for tomorrow (and saving more than 50% compared to the price I found on the official SNCF website!).

After lunch, we boarded a bus to take us to the Carrières des Lumières in an old quarry in Les Baux-en-Provence. It’s an immersive art experience, currently showing Monet and Rousseau. It’s very interesting, but I have to say I prefer it when the paintings aren’t moving.

After visiting the exhibit, we went to Mouries to visit Moulin Saint Michel, an olive mill. The owner met us, explained how olives used to be processed and showed a video with the modern methods, and then we had a tasting of olive oil and tapenade. I would have liked to have brought some olive oil home, but they didn’t sell it in small enough containers to put in our TSA bags.

And then it was back to the ship for the Farewell Dinner and packing.