Making our way out of Provence

I promised some pictures of Mount St Victoire, near Aix, but I can only post the one Jim took as I lost my camera this week during a hike. Fortunately I only lost 2 days worth of pictures!

Mount St. Victoire's southern face is massive and an awe inspiring piece of rock.  No wonder it mesmerized Cezanne!  Picasso bought most of the north side of the mountain and is buried on it.  This picture shows a piece that has broken off.  It is forever a changing piece of work.




Left Aix on a rainy Sunday and traveled to Digne les Baines, a town in the French Alps that is known for thermal waters, and as a sporting mecca.  Long ago I read about fabulous biking there.  We discovered that it had an incredible medieval section and also took some interesting hikes.  One took us to three chapels that cover a mountainside through a steep climb.

A maze of medieval passages and stairs

Our Lady of Lourdes Chapel

Our next goal was to get as  close as we could to the Gorges du Verdon, an impressive canyon with green water at the bottom that is a sports person's paradise.  Unfortunately, one bus goes down a day and we would have had to stay in some pretty pricey places to actually see the Gorges.  s for rafting and kayaking is now off season and the hiking was perilous for most and prohibitive for us.  So we picked a town at the mouth of the river Verdon and decided to spend some time exploring the area.  The town we picked was Castellone.  The bus trip to Castellone was scary.  Hairpin turns on narrow roads that barely fit a car, never mind a bus, and canyons on one side of the road.  I was dizzy by the time we arrived at this small town located at the base of a huge rock with 7 hotels and many restaurants, which speak to how busy it becomes during the summer. 

We actually walked to the top of the rock to see the chapel that has been very inspirational to the town for the last 11 centuries.  The original one was destroyed and it has been rebuilt several times. 



The path was not difficult and the stations of the cross kept us entertained, so to speak. 

         

Sometimes the scenes were depicted in tiles and some times terracotta.

Castellane became a town when the Romans discovered salt water wells.  It had a different name then, one related to the salt and the commerce that it sprang.  When Religious wars and invasions destroyed the town, the few remaining people moved to the top of the rock  and stayed there for several centuries.  Once they made their way down from the rock the town became Castellane.  The Verdon river flanks the town and it adds some levity to the landscape.

We left Castellane to spend the weekend in Nice as we  make our way to Italy.  Nice is cosmopolitan, full of people seeking to have fun and a busy place.  WE have an apartment in the old section of town which is 3 blocks from the beach and full of narrow interesting streets with shops selling everything from spices and lavender t fish and wines.  There are Restaurants of every kind and everywhere you look and all are filled with customers! 


One of our favorite places was the Matisse Museum, which is housed in what was his villa.  The building is colorful and the works are interesting.  Many of the cut outs are there and well organized so the viewer can see the making of the artist's style.  Neat!






Rain was in the forecast, but it only appeared overnight, so we walked endlessly everywhere and learned to like this place more than we anticipated.  I will sign off tonight with a few pictures that need no explanation.