Our First Day on the French Riviera

We’ve now traded the quaintness of Provence for the glitziness and
beauty of the French Riviera -- which is charming and photogenic in a whole different way. The day before, after our lunch at the base of Mont St-Victoire, we left Provence and driven east towards Nice. Along the way we learned a bit about the history of the French Riviera, known locally as the Côte d’Azur, or the Azure Coast. It started off as a string of sleepy coastal villages, and its evolution into a major tourist destination can be attributed to one thing: tuberculosis. Someone discovered that the climate here is conducive to health, and suddenly lots of people started coming here. From there it didn’t take much for the area to morph into a resort destination. Queen Victoria (who, as far as I know, never had TB) would spend her winters here, bringing an entourage of 400 aides and servants. The area became extremely popular with the English, who found the idea of winter vacations in the sunny Mediterranean to be a heck of a lot more appealing than the dreary cold of their home country.

As our bus continued toward Nice, we got our first glimpse of the Alps, and learned that this region of France is called the Alpes Maritimes, because it’s where the mountains meet the sea. A few days from now, when we visit the principality of Monaco, we’ll see just how dramatic the transition is: Monaco, like other towns along the coast, is stuffed up against a mountainside, and the upper coastal road provides a spectacular -- if scary -- view of the ocean below. Anyway, it was pretty cool to see snow-covered mountains and palm trees all on the same day.

Just before we reached Nice, we passed through the city of Cannes, where we saw fancy tents being erected in preparation for the famous annual film festival. As we drove along the beach in Cannes, our trip director pointed out that all beaches in France are “top optional” for women. We also saw the town’s Hotel de Ville, which prompted the rest of the travelers on the bus to tease me: Earlier in the trip, I had noticed that every town seems to have a Hôtel de Ville, and I had assumed it was either a hotel chain or just a very commonly used name for a hotel. (Sort of like how every beach town in New Jersey has a motel called “The Dunes.”) Well, it turns out that “Hôtel de Ville” is the French name for the city hall.

Upon arriving in Nice, we noticed once again that motor scooters were everywhere. That had been the case in all the previous towns and villages we visited as well. It’s not unusual to see eight or 10 of them parked in a row outside a cafe, and there even are a few areas in Nice that you might call “scooter parks,” where dozens of scooters (and a few motorcycles) are all crammed in. Businessmen and businesswomen, moms with kids riding on the passenger seat, even a guy driving his scooter while smoking a cigarette -- we saw it all. As far as I can tell, helmets are mandatory in France, because we never saw anyone on a scooter without one.

Our first excursion from our base of operations in Nice was St-Paul-de-Vence, where we visited the Fondation Maeght, a museum of very modern art. We saw paintings and sculptures by Joan Miró, paintings by Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, and Marc Chagall, and an entire courtyard devoted to bronze sculptures by Alberto Giacometti. Of all those artists, I had heard of only Matisse and Chagall, but several of the Penn State travelers were art buffs and were pretty excited to see works by Miró, Giacometti, the cubists, and others. In the sculpture garden outside we looked at some colorful, larger-than-life sculptures ranging from a giant hot-dog-like thing to a guy who looked like Reddy Kilowatt to a figure that one of the Penn Staters pointed out was an E.T. look-alike.

For a dramatic contrast, we went from the museum of ultra-modern art to the center of the village of St-Paul, which is another of those “perched villages,” built on a hilltop for protection in the Middle Ages. Much as we did in Les-Baux-de-St-Rémy a few days earlier, we strolled around on the narrow cobblestone streets (really more like alleys), poked around in the boutiques, cafes, and postcard shops, and took turns taking each other’s picture with the rocky hillside as our backdrop. Some of us also walked over to the cemetery that contains the grave of Marc Chagall, who was associated with St-Paul-de-Vence for 19 years of his life. Others went down to the village square to watch the men play some very serious games of boules or pétanque, which is similar to bocce.

By the way, St-Paul-de-Vence is where we saw our first and only Pepsi products on the trip. It seems that Coca-Cola has a lock on southern France -- it’s everywhere. There’s Coke, Coke Light (the European equivalent of Diet Coke), Coke Light with Lemon, and a product you don’t see in the U.S.: Coke Light Sango, which has blood-orange flavoring. In St-Paul, however, we found a café that served only Pepsi products, and I had a “Pepsi Max” -- which contained no sucre (sugar) but presumably large amounts of caffeine.

After lunch at a restaurant in the Loup (pronounced “loo”) Valley, we headed up the mountain to Grasse, a town that’s famous for its perfume-making. I’ll write about that in my next post.

Photos

Penn State traveler Bob Nicely checks out the Chagall painting “La Vie” at the Fondation Maeght, a museum of modern art outside the village of St-Paul-de-Vence, France.

The sculpture “Walking Man” is one of a number of bronze figures sculpted by Giacometti that are on display at the Maeght museum.

St-Paul-de-Vence is one of a number of picturesque “perched villages” in southern France. Dating at least to the Middle Ages, they were situated on hilltops for protection against attacks.

Men play pétanque, or boules, in the village square in St-Paul-de-Vence, France. The game is similar to bocce.

Culture, Cafes, and Cezanne in Aix-en-Provence

A favorite spot for many visitors to Provence is the lovely city of Aix-en-Provence, the center of which is its beautiful tree-lined street, the Cours Mirabeau. The town’s name is often shortened to just “Aix,” which is pronounced just like the letter “X.” When someone does say the full name, it sounds like they’re saying “Exxon Provence.”

Like many cities and towns around Provence, Aix started as an ancient Roman colony, although it doesn’t have as many Roman ruins as some other towns. An interesting thing we learned was that there would be more Roman ruins in existence today if people over the centuries hadn’t used the Roman structures as quarries -- in other words, people in, say, the Middle Ages would cannibalize the ancient Roman structures for their limestone and use it to build newer buildings.

Our walking tour started on the famed Cours Mirabeau. “Cours” means a wide avenue, and this one is named for Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, marquis of Mirabeau, who was a key figure in the French Revolution. Lining the Cours Mirabeau are large plane trees -- what we in the U.S. call sycamores -- which, when they touch, make the avenue look almost like a tunnel. When we were there the trees had recently been trimmed, so we didn’t get the tunnel effect, but the avenue was beautiful nonetheless. On either side of the street are handsome townhouses from the 17th and 18th century, as well as cafes and shops. Some of the townhouses have a face sculpted in stone -- a person or a lion, perhaps -- over the doorway. Our guide mentioned that sometimes these conveyed a particular meaning: For example, if the owner didn’t like their neighbors, the stone face over the door might have its tongue sticking out.

One of Aix’s claims to fame is that the painter Paul Cezanne was born and spent much of his life here. Our walking tour took us past the junior high school where Cezanne spent four years, the College Auguste Mignet. While there, Cezanne made friends with a classmate named Emile Zola, who would later become a respected French novelist. The two would stay friends for years -- until Zola made the mistake of writing a novel in which the central character was a failed artist. Cezanne suspected that Zola was referring to him, and he broke off the friendship.

Among the other sights we saw on our stroll through town:

--The Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, or Museum of Natural History, which sports a few dinosaur eggs.

--A monument commemorating the liberation of France on Aug. 15, 1944. Most of us know about the U.S. forces that landed in Normandy on June 6 of that year, but there also were U.S. forces who landed later on the beaches at St-Tropez, in the south of France, and moved north to Aix and the rest of Provence. Several of the people over here have told us how grateful the French are to the Americans for our country's role in World War II. One of our lecturers told us, “Without you, I would not be free.”

--The Cathedrale St-Sauveur, which has a baptistry dating to 400 A.D. as well as some very old stained-glass windows. Original stained-glass windows are rare in Provence because of the powerful Mistral wind and the damage it can cause.

--The 600-year-old University of Aix-Marseille III. Today it is almost as big as Penn State’s University Park campus -- 40,000 students -- and is a popular spot for students in Study Abroad programs.

--Shops selling sweet treats called calissons, or calissons d’Aix. A confectionery that has been made for more than 400 years, a calisson contains almonds, candied fruits, and marzipan, among other ingredients.

Some of the travelers opted to explore Aix on their own. Joady Gorelick, a Penn Stater from California who runs a business supplying needleworkers and costumers, headed over to the Musee des Tapisseries to see the 17th and 18th century tapestries and the opera and stage costumes from the 20th century.

After re-boarding the bus and leaving Aix, we headed off to lunch at a restaurant at the base of Mont St-Victoire, a mountain made famous by Cezanne, who loved it and painted it from many angles. He painted at least 60 paintings of Mont St-Victoire. We ate at a lovely restaurant and winery in the village of Relais-St-Ser, where we supplemented our country lunch with local red, white, and rose wines. (There is never a shortage of wine at meals in France.) Then we got back on the bus and headed for the Cote d’Azur, or the French Riviera. For the next five days we’ll be based in Nice. Stay tuned for dispatches from our adventures there.

Photos

The Penn State travelers visited Aix-en-Provence's Cathedrale St-Sauveur, which has a fifth-century baptistry, visible on the right-hand side of this photo.

Elegant townhouses line the main street in the town of Aix-en-Provence.

The university in Aix-en-Provence is one of France's largest, enrolling 40,000 students.

You often can find a small statue of a saint on the corner of a building in Aix-en-Provence.

Many of the old townhouses in Aix-en-Provence have a fancy -- and often humorous -- stone face over the doorway.