Mont Sainte-Victoire

My second to last day in Aix, I finally made it to St. Victoire. There were a few "Aix" things I didn't do before leaving, but I'm glad I at least managed to fit in this one. After I had stayed up most of the night writing a final paper, Robert and I went to the marché in the morning to buy apples to bring with our sandwiches, and we took the Victorine, a shuttle with a very angry driver, to the mountain.
Robert had already hiked St. Victoire several times, but he suggested one of the trails he hadn't taken before that turned out to be great for photo opps. I think there are three trails that lead to the top, and then quite a few other smaller ones around the mountain.
About half an hour into the hike, the path forked here, and we took the "easy" route to the left. The "difficult" one really leads straight up the mountain, and we didn't have the gear to faire l'escalade. Also I don't know how. St. Victoire isn't a very imposing-looking mountain, so I was expecting a much lazier hike than this actually was...we managed to do it in slightly under the suggested time even though we stopped a million times to take pictures.
Here's a pic of the rocky terrain. and Robert. I was really regretting wearing jeans and long sleeves for a while, but it was freezing at the top, and then I was glad I had bothered to bring a fleece. and scarf.
Approaching the top. Notice the pretty snow on the peaks in the distance. Robert had climbed a different trail just the day before, and he said it was much clearer that day, but I still ended up with some pretty good pics.
From the top, where we stopped to eat lunch. There's an old monastery (prieuré) very close to the top, and the people eating in the cabin there invited us to join them, but we wanted to keep going for the view.
From the other side. I wiped out just after we started to descend, which was pretty funny except I think Robert was really afraid I was going to fall down the mountain.
Refuge Cézanne. not much to look at, but we missed it on the way up and were pleased to come across it when we came back down
We had some time to kill before the next shuttle back to the center of Aix, so we walked around for a bit and saw a group of adults learning to ride mountain bikes on an obstacle course in a parking lot. That was really funny, but I didn't want to embarrass them by taking a picture. We also found this waterfall and were taking pictures of it when another shuttle came by, so we hopped on that one and made it back in time to meet Maité, Mme Scott, and other students for farewell drinks at Splendid, a bar I had passed a million times on my walk to class but never been to.
My last day in Aix was spent taking my art history exam and writing my internship paper, which I didn't send in until 10 or 11 that night. Then, I literally threw everything in my bags, said bye to Elyse, and made the trek from my auberge to my friend Claire's place since we were sharing a cab to the airport early the next morning. I packed really, really lightly for these three and a half months and still had too much stuff, but I forgot small bags aren't necessarily light, and a thirty-minute walk wheeling my suitcase over the cobblestone was pretty miserable. Regardless, I made it to our au revoir party at Auberge Hugo, and then we all went out one last time and got a picture with one of the waiters at the 24 hour café who has a really ridiculous mustache. Saying goodbye to Renaud was really sad. He said he's gotta come to the US sometime.

Back at Claire and Savannah's I slept for an hour and half before their French roommate, Luana, woke me up because she thought we were supposed to be leaving in 15 minutes. I said all kinds of unintelligible, irrelevant things to her in French before waking up enough to understand that we needed to leave. Thank goodness for Luana because we had all slept through our alarms or they didn't go off or something. The flight home wasn't too bad, especially since there was a group of us going all the way to Philadelphia, so that made it less sad, and one girl came all the way to Nashville with me.

This marks the end of my blog, which I am kind of sad to let go even though I thought at first I'd hate blogging and never keep up with it. au contraire. Thanks to everyone who read. It was nice to know I had people keeping up with what I was doing : ) ciao ciao, as Renaud would say