Aix-En-Provence (2)

I should mention that quite early on the first morning the new batteries in my camera gave up the ghost, so almost all my pictures were taken on my phone.  The quality is not the best.

The Place d'Hotel de Ville is somewhere you must visit more than once - it managed to combine two of my favourite aspects of Aix.  I stumbled across it on my way across town towards the road out to Cézanne's home.  It's picturesque at any time, but in the morning it is the home to a market.  The array of fruit and vegetables, fish, herbs, spices, cheeses, and all top quality, had to be seen to be believed.  Having worked in the food trade for two longish periods, and being fond of both cooking and eating, I love food markets and good food shops.  Aix-En-Provence is blessed with both.  There are lots of shops, mostly the small shops that could be found in any English town beforen the giant out-of-town supermarkets drove them all out of business.  Aix is a warren of shops like that.  One shop I found specialised in pink.  Pink what?  Pink everything.  The only person in the shop, who I took to be the owner, was dressed entirely in pink.  She had pink scarves, pink doorknobs, pink plastic eyeballs on legs - if it was pink, she seemed to stock it.  The following day I was at a street market where a stall holder was dressed in black.  And while she didn't have the wide range of goods of the lady in pink, she had more black clothing than I can remember seeing before: black leather belts, black frilly things, black boots and shoes, black hats and scarves.  So now you know where to go if you need black or pink.

But there are two kinds of small shops that stand out:  really nice clothes shops and really nice food shops.  There were some gorgeous shirts at a price I would never pay, similarly shoes.  I gawped at a few.

But the top shops for me were the food shops. Let's start from the market.  There picture shows a single stall in the fruit and veg market.  This was one of many.  One stall had nothing but mushrooms - more types, different sizes, some huge, some tiny, just a wide array of mushrooms.  Another stall had rows and rows of herbs and lavender. I walked round and round just drinking it all in and wishing I could buy vegetables from my table there.  This was just one food market I saw.  It was not the only one.

I went off to see the Cézanne house, and on the way back called in to pick up some herbs.  And the market was being demolished.  It was mornings only, and back the following day.  Instead the restaurants round the square were extending their groups of tables, and when I next  came that way there was room to seat several hundred people.  These open air cafés are one of the things I love most about continental Europe, from Amsterdam south.  But the ones in Provence take the cake.  It's partly the climate, partly the relaxed atmosphere, and partly the enormous variety on offer, from really good quality restaurants with a menu and wine list to tempt anyone to bars and snacks. And you can get a good local wine in any of them.

Then there are the cake and pastry shops: merangues, flans, tarts, bread, everything.  I could have overloaded on sugar and cholesterol very easily indeed.  So, getting back to the day, I walked into the market, found it gone, and wandered off down another street that I hadn't tried before.  After a few steps it opened out into a wide square, and all down one side restaurant after restaurant.  I browsed a few menus, and decided on the obvious: this is Provence, we're a short way from the Med, go for the sea food.  I found a table, sat down, and over came the waiter with a menu.

A serving of mussels

I didn't need it: "Meules Marinierre s'il vous plait".  I ordered a carafe of white côtes du rhône wine, and sat back.

In a trice there was a basket of crisp-crusted French bread, then came the wine and a flagon of water.  I settled down to enjoy nibbling the bread, and sipping the wine.  Soon the mussels arrived, along with a plate of French Fries.  Fortunately I'd been served mussels in an establishment like this before and knew what to expect.  It needs most of the afternoon and has to be washed down with half a litre of wine.