Jet 'aime Aix-en-Provence! On Saturday OLLI Francais visited this southern, Provençal city of 140,000 and strolled through the many markets of flowers, vegetables, baked goods, jewelry, linens, ad more. The ladies were sad that there was no time for shopping, but most of the men were relieved. After another wonderful lunch of salmon and poached pears for dessert at L'Orangerie, we returned through the old city and toured the Cathedrale Saint-Saveur, another lovely and vert ancient church, but with a beautiful contemporary alter. We then traveled by bus to the studio of Paul Cezanne and learned more about the artist and his life and work. After dinner at a local restaurant in Arles, many of us stayed to watch a local parade that ran from 9-11 pm, and 8 of us took a whirl on the local merry-go-round.
OLLI Francais does not rest on Sunday! We left by coach to see a bird park where the beautiful pink flamingoes live and the Mediterranean Sea tourist town of Saintes Maries de la Mer, where finally some retail therapy took place. We then journeyed to a little known area of southern France, the Camargue, the delta region of the Rhone, where we saw a demonstration of how bulls are cut from the rest of the herd to be chosen for bull fighting and toured the ranch. On the way back we made a brief stop at the bridge that Van Gogh painted when he lived in Arles.
I hope you are enjoying these brief descriptions of our amazing journey and will forgive me my typos, as I am often writing on the fly. Au bientot, Janet
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