Today was a day of rest sort of.No special place planned so we had a casual breakfast and decided to visit the local food market. This was in a part of Aix I had never been to. The market wasn't very big, but the center of town was just next door and it was very impressive. Building built just after the French Revolution. We sat here and had coffee and soft drinks and watched the world walk by for some time.
The City Hall with a bell tower to honor those who gave their life for their country. Now the city hall in France is called the Hotel de Ville so many first timers to France think that every city and town has at least one fancy hotel.
The Central Post Office. Notice the ladies foot hanging below the lentil. Neat. When we were in College, on certain homecoming nights you could take your date to your room, but one foot had to always be on the floor. Maybe this is where that rule came from.
A closeup.
Coffee in the plaza.
We then walked through the bell tour and found more restaurants we did not know existed, This is where we would eat tonight.
For some reason these type of fountains are all over Aix. Maybe from Roman times. I don't know.
One of the many side streets of Aix.
The church tour in the back ground. Strted in 400 AD and expanded and rebuilt till in it's present condition.
Inside the church.
It was getting close to lunch time so we decided to have a picnic back at the Apartments inner coourt yard. Picked up some ham and cheese at the fore mentioned market, went back to the apartment, got the wine and had a very nice picnic. Beautiful day, beautiful company. Finally drank the wine I had bought for the picnic at Dega's house that we didn't get around to.
In the inner court yard.
This is the inner courtyard. In much of Europe, rather than build a building to fill in the entire block, they build it around the edges, no more than 5 stories high and make the inner space a shared courtyard. In this case it is shared by our hotel apartments and a home for pensioners.
A pensioner gets her daily walk in a secure outdoor area. Others gather under an umbrella to talk.
The ladies make this a wash day since the hotel has facilities, Well actually one washer and one dryer. Between loads, we sit in the courtyard and drink wine. Well maybe just a little too much so a late afternoon nap is in order.
We walk to the restaurants we had seen earlier. Along the way were hundreds of birds in the trees as we walked by.
We also encountered the Beatles along the way.
What a mistake in choices of restaurants. It was labeled Italian, but was by far the worst meal we have had so far. And that includes the Pizza fiasco some Saturdays ago. Couldn't get out of there fast enough. Dessert elsewhere.
Mary Ann and Linda really liked this green coat.
Another view of the green coat.
Linda's pear dessert to try and help her forget about dinner. Hope it worked. A port and a Flan only helped for a little bit for me.
Tomorrow Mary Ann and I are driving up to a hill town north of here to see if we can meet with a friend of a friend who has a bar there. Last friend of a friend we looked for was in Japan. We will see where this one is. Linda is sitting this one out.
Yes they said it was a green coat.
No comments:
Post a Comment