Aix in the rain
A France unplanned: Part six
This was originally written in late August 2023 during my unplanned escape to France.
It rained all day when I visited Aix-en-Provence; there was no let-up from sun up to sun down. I squelched on the slippery, treacherous cobblestones around the Vieille Ville, the Old City. Selfishly, I didn’t mind the poor weather. It meant fewer crowds in popular areas and emptier shops to peruse at leisure.
My self-guided walking tour was dictated by the elements. The drizzle started me off at the old quarter, the Place des Cardeurs, which wasn’t ready for the day. The bars and cafes were closed; tables and chairs folded out of sight. I shuffled on to the Place d'Albertas, taking in its ornate windows and dulcet yellow exterior, then strolled down the webbed alleys and watched the city awake one street at a time.
Reverie
Once the proper downpour started, I went the Victor Hugo route and sought shelter in the only place I could think of that allowed for a pause without obliging me to purchase or say anything: a cathedral. My rainctuary (I stand by my portmanteaus) was the Paroisse Cathédrale Saint Sauveur Aix-en-Provence, a fascinating mix of architectural styles owing to its building and rebuilding over several centuries (twelfth to nineteenth). The entrance I passed through had a Gothic facade, but directly to its left was a Romanesque structure. The interior similarly provided a walkable history of the spanning epochs, medieval triptychs, neoclassical columns, Byzantine icons, and baptistry built where a Roman temple once stood.
I sat in one of the naves and watched as some in attendance prayed in reverence while others photographed the religious icons and artwork. In one of the transepts, I lit the top and bottom of a candle and secured it under a painting of the Virgin Mary and her infant son. How many sets of eyes stood here over the decades, looking up and asking for help? What should I have asked for? Faith? An umbrella?
Failure
The deluge outside turned into a mizzle. With my clothes somewhat dried, I walked out of the cathedral’s wooden portals and noticed between my feet a small plaque that had “Cézanne” written on it. It was one of several breadcrumbs scattered across the city to mark the areas frequented by the artist, the paths he took, and locations of note. A delightful egg hunt.
Taking that as the actual sign that it was, I started towards the end of the old town and up the hill to visit the Atelier de Cézanne, his studio located thirty minutes away on foot. When I reached it, I was out of breath, damp from sweat and rain, and must have looked feral with my frizzy hair loosely secured with a wet ribbon and mascara smudged around my eyes. My disappointment mounted as I learned that there were no more available slots to visit the studio today; in fact, there were none for the next five days. The only consolation arrived in the form of a visitor who, upon hearing my pleas to only take a quick peak, told me in a Scandinavian accent that he’d just descended from the studio, and “It was okay, not great. Looks exactly like all that”, and pointed to the posters and puzzles in the gift shop depicting the artist’s space.
The grounds outside were lovely, though muddy. I walked as far as I could manage, then returned to a shed by the entrance that had a video on autoplay, which narrated critical moments of Cézanne’s life, interspersed with fragments from letters he wrote to his son Paul and his former friend Émile Zola. In them, Cézanne repeatedly expressed self-doubt, a sense of repeated failure, and his detachment from the community. “The world doesn’t understand me and I don't understand the world, that's why I've withdrawn from it.”
I walked back into the Old Town, pausing along the way to imagine what Aix might have looked like some 130 years ago, minus the cars, minus the newer buildings, minus the volume of people walking up and down this hill, and minus two wars.
Here I was, a day after my stopover in Arles, meditating on the exact same thought: how failure was defined by the window of time in which it was experienced. Cézanne and van Gogh spent their lives carting around a sense of under-accomplishment, defeat, and alienation. Their impressionist contemporaries, Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Pissarro, Bazille, and Morisot (to a lesser extent), eventually received validation and recognition in their lifetime despite being the outcasts of the art society. But many others went to their graves without an idea of the significant impact their works would bring to the world years or decades later.
We ought to abandon rethinking and reliving the memories of our failures; we're not the best judges to ascertain what absolutely failed and what was simply ahead of its time.
Delight
Lavender was omnipresent; there was no shortage of dedicated shops selling Provence’s iconic export. Big satchels, small pouches, eye masks, oils, pillows, tinctures, handkerchiefs, soaps, and salad mixes.
Similarly, regional herb blends were in abundance. I stopped by the Instagrammable Maison Bremond 1830 and played a game of "guess the ingredients" in the spice jar with the patient (and bored) shopkeeper. Fortunately, I had little room in my luggage and, as such, needed to narrow down my selection from everything to just a few jars of fish and meat marinades.
Lunch was a much-deserved Croques Madame (when is it ever undeserved?), and then it was walking time again down more of Aix’s wet streets that were lined with pastel buildings and brightly-coloured doors. Everything appeared out of a painting, owing to the effect of overcast skies on hues and texture. Stopping for tea and gelato at the farmer's market square, I eventually reached Cours Mirabeau, the famous street that Cézanne, Camus, and Zola walked - likely in better weather. I circled the Fontaine de la Rotonde, then spotted a familiar plaque on the ground nearby, then saw the statue of Cézanne before me.
With my spice blends and lavender in hand, I returned to the car on the other side of the Old Town. This time, I passed by the now-familiar and emptying alleys with a newly acquired blingy headband atop my messy hair, bringing a bit of sparkle to a grey day.
