BOX 157: Aix to Carcassonne.

Looking like a fairy-tale dream rising above the modern bridge, the Cité de Carcassonne is one of the most fantastic sites/sights of southern France. In the late 1800s many French towns were demolishing their ancient city walls in favor of modern expansion, but Carcassonne saw fit to restore its own spectacular fortress. Cité here means citadel. There's a modern city of Carcassonne to the north of the Cité, with its own Old Quarter; in 2015 when four of us drove in from the north we had quite a bit of trouble finding the Cité. But when my friend Max and I approached from the south during our 1984 trip through southern France, we couldn't miss it.

As my previous post described, we started our drive from Milan, drove south to Pavia and

the Italian Riviera, then turned westward toward the French border. We didn't explore the French Riviera (which I had visited in 1973--see BOXES 82-83) but went directly to Aix-en-Provence. The photo on the right is the first picture I took there--unless it's the last picture I took in Italy. There's a plaque on the rounded corner of the building that would probably explain my interest in the place, but the resolution isn't good enough to read it or the other signage; I should rescan the slide at a higher resolution to solve the mystery. Anyhow, my next shot is definitely of Aix, which has elegant tree-lined boulevards. There was no particular festival going on when we visited, but Aix was certainly lively with outdoor markets, as the pictures that follow reveal.

In the last of the shots above, it looks like a stand is folding up its tent for the day, while some street musicians continue to play. The only other photo of Aix I took is of part of the facade of the Eglise de la Madeleine. The greater interest for Max and me was outside the city limits: Mont Sainte-Victoire, the mountain so famously painted by Aix native Paul Cezanne. Here's our first glimpse of it:

And here it is full-on:

There was a handsome maison below the peak that I haven't been able to identify:

Wildflowers were in bloom at the foot of the mountain:

Also nearby was the Fondation Vaselery, dedicated to the art of Victor Vaselery. I especially like the photo of Max that I took in front of a Vaselery painting; and I like the one he took of me, with a Vaselery sculpture and Mont Sainte-Victoire in the background:

Our next overnight stay was Avignon, where we saw Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas at the film festival that was going on that evening. I was glad to return to Avignon, which I'd visited in 1974 (BOXES 86-87) when my sister was attending summer school there. It has its own tree-lined avenues and squares:

And we spent time--along with most Avignon visitors--at the cafes on the Place de l'Horlogue listening to street musicians:

I'd photographed the most famous sights of the city back in '74, but I couldn't resist another shot of the imposing Palace of the Popes:

And here is a photo of the Basilique Saint-Pierre, though unfortunately I didn't adjust the camera for afternoon shadow. Beyond Avignon we saw at least one Provencal hill town: Gordes. But I confess that I have no memory of visiting it.

Our next stop was the Pont du Gard, the astonishingly intact Roman aqueduct that I'd visited in '74, though this time the drive was much less effortful thanks to our car's automatic shift.

This time we walked down to the river, where I took a couple of photos. In the second one I didn't mean to catch the bathers in awkward positions, but in retrospect they remind me a little of Cezanne's "Bathers" paintings:

Next was Arles, of interest both for its Roman monuments and its Van Gogh associations. The following photo looks down at a tree-filled square: I'd like to think we are seeing the awning of the cafe on the Place du Forum that Van Gogh made famous in a painting, but I'm not sure--it could just be some uncelebrated square as seen from our hotel window--or the Place du Forum from another angle.

I didn't take photos of Arles' Roman sites, like the Amphitheatre, since I had taken pictures back in '74, but I did record the blossoms in the beautiful cloister of Saint-Trophime:

I also attempted an 'artistic' photo of a cluster of roses against the spire of the Church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Major, but lighting and focus turned out to be unsatisfactory. Later that day we drove south through the region known as the Camargue, the delta of the Rhone, to a beach. It was probably on that drive that I took this photo of vineyards:

That evening, as dusk approached, we found a hotel in the city of Béziers. It wasn't a "tourist town" like the places in Provence we had visited, but it turned out to be an interesting-enough city for us to spend the next morning exploring parts of it. Our hotel was on a boulevard that was tree-lined with a very expansive pedestrian center--like a wider Las Ramblas in Barcelona but far more laid-back and sparsely populated):

Béziers has its own Cathedral, somewhat blocky in its gothic design:

There were some very nice public gardens and, since this part of town was built on a hill, good views looking down on the rest of the city:

But our main goal for that day was to continue westward to Carcassonne. Here was our first view of the citadel:

And here is where we entered the Old City:

We visited the relatively small but handsome gothic Cathedral:

And we walked around the open area between the inner and outer walls:

I didn't take photos of the narrow tourist-crowded streets of the Old Town--or, in those pre-foodie-photo days, of the cassoulet we tried (the local specialty). Later in the day we drove on to the north toward Albi, where we planned to stay overnight. But I will save Albi and its very special features for the next post, along with our visits to Cahors, Rocamadour and the Dordogne Valley.