Aix-en-Provence is a town about an hour West of Cannes/Mandelieu. It is well known for it's tree-lined streets, outdoor cafes, numerous fountains, old buildings, and general, overall, Provençal-ness. It is reputed to get very, very crowded during the summer. So the first nice day we had we decided to head over and check it out before it got too crowded. The kids would like the fountains, we would like the cafes and the tree-lined streets. We stayed the night, which was a good thing to do because there was a big difference in what you could do on Saturday vs. Sunday.

Saturday was all walking around looking for the fountains, which we did find many of, and checking out the old buildings, some from the 15th century. After a full day of walking around and playing in fountains it was very good to have a hotel room to go back to. Sunday was market day and all the squares were filled with some sort of market. It was another nice sunny day, so a stop in a cafe was also in order.

Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are about 7,000 words. Click here to see pictures of all the fountains.

Here is a picture down one of the streets in Aix (pronounced like the letter X). The village is full of streets like this, all with nice shops, boulangeries, cafes, patisseries, etc.

Aix also had a large number of bell towers and clocks. Alot of the bell towers had rather ornate iron work on the top of them, where the bell was usually stored. This particular example is a bell that goes of rather wildly and for a long time on the half-hour. But you can see how fancy and ornate the iron work is. The second picture is at on the ubiquitous cafes. This was in the square with the clock tower from the first picture visible in the background. Jeff didn't want his picture taken. Something about stealing his soul.

Here is a view out of our hotel room, across the town to the old church steeple. The road below is the main street in Aix, Cours Maribou. You can see the trees lining the street, though they were about a week away from blooming.

As you might expect, there were a good number of street artists roaming about the town. Here is a picture of one of the more colorful acts. The boys really enjoyed watching. They had puppets that were characters playing musical instruments and they moved with the beat of the music so that it looked like they were making the music.

The first picture is of Steve and Connor looking out the window of the Hotel De Ville. The Hotel De Ville is not really a hotel. It is the town center and every town has one, even Mandelieu. The French call the town center the Hotel De Ville because during the French Revolution all the rebels met in a hotel in Paris called the Hotel De Ville to plot out there strategy and who would get guillotined next. After the rebels won and tossed out the monarchy they continued to use the old hotel as their meeting area. So the name stuck through time and now all the town centers are called the Hotel De Ville, though they don't really plot guillotine victims anymore. The place is not usually open, but was today because they were announcing who won the local elections. I don't know who won, but it's safe to say it was some French guy.