For our second morning in Aix, Katelyn decided she wanted to climb Montagne Saint-Victoire. In hindsight, this probably was not the brilliant beyond brilliant idea that Katelyn thought it would be after such a late night. Nevertheless, the five of us set out around 10 am to catch the bus to the mountain side. Mt. Saint-Victoire is the mountain that makes starring appearance in many of Cézanne’s masterpieces and our expectations were as high as its altitude as we began our ascent. Jen and Nick were a couple of mountain goats, quickly getting ahead of the rest of us while Greg and Katie lagged behind, and Geraldine acting as our guide brought up the rear, wise to conserve her energy for later (she was climbing for a second time despite her better judgement).
The mountain took about three hours to climb. But those three hours consisted of real climbing—no stairs or hand railings here. Instead, we found ourselves scaling steep rocks and walking along the edges of cliffs. Needless to say, we had to take frequent breaks and the water supplies quickly ran low. Extra sunblock probably would have been a good idea, too. But the views over Provence were spectacular and well worth all the effort. We could see across the countryside, over vineyards and hillsides, and all the way to the Mediterranean. Très belle.
At the summit, there’s a quaint little 17th century abbey/church and a hole in the ground labeled ‘WC’. There, we sat in the shade and had our lunch of fruits and bread and water taken from an old well. A sign claimed that its contents were impotable but the water was cold and clear and too tempting to resist. Rejuvenated, we started downhill at twice the pace (it was downhill, after all). This time we hardly took any breaks, stopping only to sit and slide down steep embankments on our bottoms. An hour and a half later, we were back on flat ground and waiting for the bus.
Our final hours in Aix were spent packing and showering as well as consuming pizza and cold beer—the thought of which had seemed brilliant atop the mountain and proved to be so in reality. Then we put on our backpacks and traveling shoes and caught the bus back to Marseille for our trip to Roma.
