The First Things to Buy in Aix-en-Provence

 1.  Two cloth napkins. Yes I could just buy paper napkins but what’s the fun in that?  These I can take home as souvenirs.  Notice that the napkins to the left have cicadas (cigales) in them.  The blue one is for me and the red one for Fernando.

2.  A Bottle of Pastis.  I should buy this at the very start of our 6 weeks because it will undoubtedly take us that long to drink it.  But I can use it in cooking too.

3.  Orgeat Syrup.  This is so we can make a Mauresque with the Pastis instead of drinking it straight with water.  Orgeat typically includes almonds, sugar, water, orange flower water and a brandy or rum.  The Mauresque is 2 ounces of Pastis, 1 ounce of Orgeat Syrup and sparkling water.  It should help the medicine go down.

4.  Espelette Pepper.  This is from the French Basque country but I haven’t been able to find it in stores here.  I could order it from Walmart, Target or Amazon but I’d rather wait until I’m in France.  Plus I can use it there since I won’t have my Chipotle or Gochujang.

5.  Salt from the Camargue.  I should be able to buy this in the grocery store.  I’m going to need salt so I might as well make it local.  There’s even a Sel de Camargue with Espelette Pepper!  I could bring one home for Willy!

6.  Olive Oil.  Let’s make sure we pick up a local bottle from Provence, not Spain or Morocco.

7.  Mayonnaise and Aioli.  I know I should make my own mayonnaise like any decent French cook, but the last time I routinely made it was in Colombia more than 50 years ago and that was with a blender.  The apartment might not even have a whisk.  There are several brands we could try out.  

As for Aioli, don’t look now but Hellman’s sells a Garlic Mayonnaise/Aioli.  I’ll wait for a French version or maybe just grate a little garlic into my mayonnaise.

Equipping the French Kitchen

I don’t really plan on buying anything for our own kitchen but it’s always nice to see how other countries equip theirs.  And who knows?  Maybe there is some little item, like a salt cellar or dish towel (un torchon), that I could tuck in my luggage and bring back as a souvenir.  

Perusing Google Maps, I ran across a commercial Ecotel kitchen store near the Carrefour in Aix-en-Provence which offers a Boutique Morcrette for home cooks.  Before we go shopping at Carrefour we can drool over the LaCanche stoves and the Mauvie pots and maybe pick up some ideas.  

There is something we might need:  a shopping cart to take to the markets!  But I don’t have to go all the way to Carrefour for that.  Not far from the Aparthotel Adagio, on the way to the markets, there is a very crowded kitchenware store called, appropriately, Culinarion.  

Frankly, it has everything you could possibly need:  wooden spoons, 3 minute old-fashioned egg-timers, frying pans, Staub and Le Creuset enameled cast iron casseroles, knives, whisks, scissors, poubelles, aprons, zesters of all kinds, etc., etc.  And little old lady shopping carts.  I might get lost in there the first weekend.  

If you look at the photos of Culinarion on Google Maps, there are some from the Société VM3D that allow you to look around 360 degrees and check to see if they have what you are looking for.

Oh my!  Aren’t Camila and I going to have fun in Aix-en-Provence!

Les Boulangeries

 Oh my Lord!  My last posting was July 15th!  Have I exhausted everything there is to know about Aix-en-Provence?  Quite possibly…but then I reviewed the photos of the Aparthotel Adagio and was appalled to see sandwich bread in their breakfast buffet!!

I’ve seen lots of patisseries around the marché but not as many boulangeries as I would like.  In Paris in the 17th arroundissement there were plenty.  I’m not going to be eating sandwich bread in France!  Not even for sandwiches!  So I am on a Quest!

Observing Leslie says that the best boulangerie in Aix is Farinoman Fou, 1.1 kilometers from our aparthotel, so it’s not one to go to every morning to get our morning pain.  Leslie says they enjoyed “the D’Isère et d’Ardèche (a magnificent fruit, nut, and grain combination) and Le Batard du Cousin (crunchy seeds over a delicious whole-grain interior).” Sounds like my kind of bread.  

Leslie also said that the best baguette was from a chain: Hat’s. They also have artisan bread which is even more expensive than Farinoman. But the location on Rue Espariat is a close 8-minute walk from the British American Institute where we have language classes. They seem to specialize in lunches so that is an option. I wonder if they take the tickets resto.

But, is there a boulangerie just down the street from our aparthotel? Fortunately there is one a 3 minute walk away on Rue de la République: La Fournaise. Their artisan bread looks very good to me and they even have a fougasse with olives! They’re open everyday from 7am to 8pm except for Sunday when it is 7am to 2 pm.

And there is another boulangerie south of that on Ave. Giuseppe Verdi, a 5 minute walk from the aparthotel.  It is part of a chain: Land & Monkeys.  

Fortunately, we won’t have to settle for sandwich bread while we are in Aix.

La Cuisine Magrebi

Rfissa from Morocco

According to Wikipedia: 

Maghreb cuisine is the cooking of the Maghreb region, the northwesternmost part of Africa along the Mediterranean Sea, consisting of the countries of Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. Well-known dishes from the region include couscous, pastilla, tajine and shakshouka.

I have run across several Moroccan and Tunisian restaurants in Aix and since  Provence is so close to North Africa, and since France had colonies there from 1912 to 1956, we should try some, and hopefully they will be better than that horrible restaurant in Washington DC, where the food was bland, they charged a mint and didn’t take credit cards.

La Menara is a Moroccan restaurant that is not too far from the Adagio and that looks nice.  They have couscous, tajines and briwattes (boreks).   La Kahena is a Tunisian restaurant with lovely tiled walls and Tunisian dishware, so it’s very atmospheric.  Their lunch “menu” is pictured at the left but they have couscous and tagines as well.  Then there is La Table Tunisienne which offers fish dishes in addition to meat and vegetarian.  It is more informal and French fries come with all dishes, not uncommon.

I expected to find some Algerian restaurants but so far have only run across Tunisian and Moroccan.  Is the memory of Algeria’s fight for independence too strong?

The TasteAtlas has a list of the top 100 (not just 10!) foods from the Maghreb, and it’s not just tagines and couscous.  Some of the foods listed are street foods, many are celebratory dishes, and many are breads and sweets.  If I study that list, I should know what to look for.  Will I remember them all?  Not a chance.

Les Marchés d’Aix-en-Provence: Place Richelme and Places des Comtales

If I’m going to make a trip to a fresh air market and back in the mornings before class at 9 am, I better figure out their locations and the quickest route to each.

The Place Richelme market is a food market that is open every day from 8 am to 1 pm.  It is 750 meters or about half a mile from the Aparthotel Adagio.  You take Rue des Chartreux north to Rue Celony, turn right and continue to Rue Van Loo where you turn right.  You continue on Rue Van Loo, crossing Cr. Sextius, where Van Loo becomes Rue des Cordeliers.  You continue on that, passing Le Fournil des Cordeliers bakery until Rue Maréchal Foch where you make another right before the Halles aux Graines, at the far corner of which is the Virgin Mary, watching over the tourists in the Place Richelme, although this is just a food market so there might not be many.  We might have to make a pit stop at the Amorino gelato shop back on the corner of Rue des Cordeliers and Rue Maréchal Foch.  Won’t the boys be happy!

The Route from Aparthotel Adagio to Place Richelme

At the south side of Place Richelme is the Fontaine Sanglier, one of the many fountains in Aix.  The sanglier is the local wild pig and if you want to return to Aix, remember that you need to rub its tusks!  There are several bakeries around here:  Boulangerie Paul, Le Pain Quotidien, Maison Saint-Honoré; also several others that concentrate on patisserie.  After the market hours, cafés set up tables and chairs in the Place Richelme.  I should also mention that there is a flower market just north of Place Richelme in the Place de l’Hotel de Ville on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

A larger food market takes place in Places des Comtales on the Aix market days of Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.  It is the combined markets of Place des Prêcheurs and Place de Verdun near the Palais de Justice.  These markets are just a few blocks further on from the Place Richelme.  Exit the southeast corner of Place Richelme and take Rue Mejanes south to Rue Chaudronniers, make a left then a slight right onto Rue Monclar.  Follow Rue Monclar around the Palais de Justice to the market on Place de Verdun.

Route from Place Richelme to Place de Verdun

And that is where the food markets are.  On Cours Mirabeau they have a flea and crafts market on the Market Days (Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.  They also have an Arts & Crafts Market at the top of Avenue Victor Hugo and Rue Thiers by the Palais de Justice.

Getting Around Aix by Bus

 It’s been a while since I mentioned the bus system in Aix and I’ve been meaning to scope out the best routes to the most important places.  Like to Carrefour.

The Aix en Bus website is very good and I hope the bus system itself lives up to it.  The regular fare is 1.20€ plus 0.10€ de support (does that mean tax?) so 1.30€.  There doesn’t seem to be a discount for kids.  A round trip or 2-ticket fare is 2.30€ + 0.10€ and you can buy 10 tickets for 9€ + 0.10€.  You can buy them on the bus.

We get a bus pass from Road Scholar so we shouldn’t have to worry about it.  Camila and the boys should just pay by the trip since we’ll walk to most places within the city center.  There is a 7-day pass for 55€ but I’m not sure what regions it covers since a 30 day pass only costs 28€.

The AixenBus website has plans of all the routes and a tool, as in Google Maps, that you can use to plan your tailor-made itinerary (Votre itinéraire sur mesure), for instance, the route to Carrefour.  But I think it is easier to use Google Maps, except that now Google Maps is showing me the current departure time for Pittsburgh, although the results show the current time in Aix.  It’s also not as easy to see the previous stops of the bus route in Google Maps, as I swear it was before.  Hopefully everything will straighten out once we are there.  In any case, it looks like the #05 bus is the one to take from the Niollon stop on Rue de la République, getting off at C. Cial des Milles, taking 33 minutes.  Coming back though, we’d have to walk from La Rotonde back to the hotel since #05 takes a slightly different route in the other direction.

#05 bus route from Aparthotel Adagio to Carrefour 

Rick Steves doesn’t mention the local bus system because he assumes everything worth seeing in 3 days is within the historic center and you can walk to it or, if not, you can take a taxi.  He does mention that the longer distance buses to towns like Marseille, Arles and Avignon are faster than the trains.  I’ll study those and post my findings later.

Aix Restaurants to Check Out & Why

Yes, I know we have about 40 days to fill up with eating out but I want to make sure we don’t miss any of the typical Provençal dishes and not all the restaurants in Aix offer them.  

Having said that, my first restaurant, Le Saint Jean, isn’t particularly Provençal and is rather heavy on the meats, but we usually don’t do steaks at home and who wants to grill in an aparthotel?  Their steaks look cooked just right  and they come with French fries.  It’s a relatively new restaurant (2 years?) and offers an extensive menu of beef cuts and several choices for lamb, pork, veal, and poultry (magret de canard for instance).  There is also pasta and a good selection of fish dishes for those who cringe at the thought of eating red meat (yum!).  The mixed charcuterie and cheese board looks great but for two people it wouldn’t leave much room for the plat, much less the dessert. 

 But maybe we could just order that with a Salade Saint Jean:  Salade du marché, Jarret de Boeuf confit, pomme de terre, tomate, croutons à  l’ail, vinaigrette moutarde.

The second restaurant, La Brocherie, has a wood-burning hearth where they grill their meats and fish.  The ambiance is a little less sophisticated but it looks like a lot of fun.  Their menu offers two typical soups: soupe de poisson and soupe au pistou (roughly a fish soup and a minestrone) and they also offer a bouillabaise at a reasonable price (26€).    They also have classic French dishes like Magret de Canard, lamb chops, veal kidneys and andouillette. 

Camila and the boys might like it since they feature both pasta and fish. Lots of dessert choices and for Silas they have l’Assiette Gourmand with pavé au chocolat, crème brûlée à la lavande, glace verveine, glace calisson, soufflé glacé à l’anis, or variations thereof.

The third restaurant for this post is Les Galinas - La Table Provençale, a little more sophisticated and upscale than La Brocherie with a more limited menu and a more careful presentation of the food, even if they don’t have tablecloths and are trying to recreate grandmother’s provençal cooking.  It is a Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant so we can probably expect smaller portions and because the menu changes, one should probably check the menu before making a reservation, which is pretty much required for all these places.  Les Galinas always seem to have lamb tripe, sardines in oil, and oeufs mimosas on the menu and usually offer a meat dish, a pasta and a fish among their plats.  There are photos of an octopus appetizer, head cheese, and someone mentioned rabbit so it will be interesting to see what they have the day we go.

Until the next episode, Bon Appétit!

Restaurants for Camila and the Boys

 Since we’ll be in Aix-en-Provence for 6 weeks, when Camila and the boys are there, I’ll concentrate on restaurants with dishes they might like to eat rather than Pieds et Paquets, Agneau au Lait, and Magret de Canard.  However, I must admit that not one of the restaurants on my Google Map list was among Rick Steves’ recommendations, and not one of Rick’s recommendations was on my list.  Again however, the one recommendation of his for London that we went to was really horrid and many of his choices in Aix seem to be chosen for their al fresco ambiance.  Has he even been to them?  He says they « are carefully reviewed by my friends at Tastes of Provence food tours ».  Eh bien…  back to my list.

For Camila, there’s a little restaurant near the Adagio called Restaurant l’Envie that has creative and nicely presented dishes with lots of flowers but, surprisingly, no website.  Their desserts look particularly  attractive.  You can see photos of their dishes at The Fork, and make reservations too.

The boys should like Le Four Aixois (and us too) which specializes in wood-fired pizza.  The mushroom pizza looks good to me, even if it doesn’t have slices of truffle on top.  Hopefully the boys will order something besides cheese and pepperoni, maybe a moitié/moitié, which is half cheese and half anchovy.  Anchovies are big in the south of France.  Did you know that tapenade is traditionally made with anchovies and capers, not just olives?

And yes, I think we’ll be eating pizza more than once.  Some of the pizzerias serve their pizzas Italian style with part of the ingredients added après cuisson or after cooking.  Pizzeria Delices de Capoue is one of those and we should try this après cuisson style at least once, since they have some rather interesting compositions.  If we go to Marseilles, we might visit one of La Bonne Mère locations for pizza where they name them after Marcel Pagnol characters.  In Marseille the influence of Neapolitan immigrants is quite strong.

One of Rick Steves’ recommendations that I would like to try is La Fromagerie du Passage which I had saved in my food shop list but evidently they have a restaurant on the second floor and the roof where you can order a platter of 5 cheeses for 22€.  Rick says you get bread and a salad with that.  They also have a platter for 4 people with 25 different cheeses for 95€.  Do you think the boys would be interested?  I know Papi would be.  They also serve a hamburger.  Or boeuf tartare.

Les 25 Fromages Differents

There are also a couple of restaurants with the Michelin Bib Gourmand.  I don’t think we’d be able to afford a Michelin starred restaurant but these are supposed to be gourmet level and not too expensive.  One is Licandro le Bistro which has a formule for lunch that isn’t too expensive (34€).  Another is Vintrépide which also has a formule for lunch (complet 34€, entrée/plat or plat/dessert 28€).  Its inpiration of the week for lunch is lamb ravioli, cod with artichoke and cherry clafouti for dessert, which sounds pretty good to me.  A third Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant is Coté Cour but their prices are a bit higher.

Because Aix is a university town, there are a lot of international options including Moroccan, Thai, Japanese, and Korean.  There’s an upscale Thai restaurant, Phatsara, that has a large menu and nicely presented dishes.  There’s also a Breton creperie: Le P’tit Breton and an upscale Ethiopian restaurant, Chez Ama.  Upscale as opposed to a hole in the wall.  Mary Vallejo ate there and said it was very good.

And of course, we can always cook in the apartment, can’t we?  And the markets also have takeout food, especially Middle Eastern.  I even found a rotisserie chicken takeout not too far away from the hotel.  I don’t think we’ll starve.  What would you like?

 

Cabillaud / artichaut

 

Clafoutis cerise 

Lunch Break!

 Tickets Resto!  

For certain “provided” meals, Road Scholar is giving us “tickets resto”, vouchers for eating at participating restaurants.  These are part of an employee’s benefits when their employer doesn’t have a cantine that offers lunch.  The employee as well as the employer pays into the system (like social security or health benefits) so it is to their benefit to participate.  The goal is to continue that very French tradition of a long lunch at restaurants and typically colleagues will get together and go out to lunch ensemble.

If one of the symbols above is displayed in the restaurant’s window or if it has a TR sticker,  it means they accept the ticket resto.  “ The tickets can represent a maximum amount of 11,38 euros per ticket and starts from 7,50 euros. The amount differs according to the company.”  We’ll see how much Road Scholar gives us.  I believe it’s supposed to cover the price of a formule lunch (the fixed price lunch) but you can also use it at grocery stores for food.  However, you don’t get change back.  You can read all about it at Ensemble en France.

Our first ticket resto lunch is on Friday of the first week of classes and every Friday thereafter when we have a “cultural” excursion in the afternoon together with our Group Leader.  That’s when we go to sites like the Hôtel de Caumont, the Atelier Cézanne, Nice, the Musée Granet, and the Santons Fouque.  Of course, Road Scholar might change the itinerary but that’s what’s up there now.  I’m looking forward to it!

La Laverie

 There are two laveries automatiques within walking distance of the Aparthotel Adagio in Aix-en-Provence.  The closest, LAM, belongs to  a chain of laundromats and it looks modern and clean.  It is open from 7 am to 8 pm (maybe until 9) and the 6 kg washer costs 5.50€ and the dryer costs 1.50€ for 9 minutes.  Fernando thinks he can wear his clothes for 6 weeks without washing them.  “Nobody will notice” he says…. He’ll just douse himself with perfume.

The second laverie, STM Laverie, looks like a small independent operation, it doesn’t have a website, and the photos on Google maps are from 4 years ago.  There are other STMs in Aix so it might be a chain without a presence.  We can test them both; after all, we have six weeks in Aix to kill and we can do our French homework while we are waiting.  I think there’s a café nearby…

Here’s the map with our walking route from the hotel:

Now all we need is a shopping cart…

The Weather in Aix

Fighting the Mistral

I’ve been very happy with the weather in Aix-en-Provence so far and I haven’t even been there!  At first I was collecting the forecast for each day between April 10 and May 23, but you know how that can be.  Then I found the Time and Date website with the past weather so I’ve been using that:

https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/france/aix-en-provence/historic

As you can see, it’s been quite pleasant.  The lowest has been 46 and the highest 81 but the vast majority of days have lows in the 50s and highs in the 70s, which seems pretty delightful to me.  And most days are sunny or at worst partly sunny.  Very little rain but a fair amount of wind and there are all sorts of winds in Provence:  the Mistral, the Transmontane,  the Levant, the Scirocco, the Marin.  

Frederic Mistral

The most famous is the Mistral, a cold northwest wind that brings clear skies.  I’ll need to pick up a santon of Frederic Mistral fighting the Mistral for our nativity scene.  Oh oh.  It looks like I’ll have to pick up two.  It’s a shepherd that’s fighting the Mistral, not Frederic Mistral.  I actually expect to pick up more than two since I need one of Cezanne and a fishwife would be nice, or maybe a woman making aioli. We are going to the workshop of Santons Fouque with the Road Scholar group so let me know if you want anything.

Practicalities for Aix-en-Provence

 I want to cover a few of the basics for our stay in Aix-en-Provence so I have them written down someplace when I forget them.

Hopefully I won’t forget the apartment-hotel we are staying at and hopefully they won’t change it at the last minute.  We should have a 1-bedroom apartment at the Aparthotel Adagio Aix-en-Provence Centre which is at the northwest corner of the historic center: 3-5 Rue Des Chartreux, 13100, Aix-en-Provence France.  

 The location is good since it is only a block or two from the Boulevard de la Republique which has several bus lines going to and from the town center and also out to the suburbs where the Carrefour and Auchan Hypermarchés are located.  Apparently the nearby supermarket, Casino, has closed.  Let’s see if I can do my marketing at the marché before language classes start at 9 am.  Update:  The Casino supermarché has been replaced by an Intermarché so we are good to go.  I only hope they have a fresh squeezed orange machine like Franprix did.

The apartment has a small kitchenette with a microwave, cooktop (hopefully 4-burner but maybe only 2), coffee-maker, teapot, cookware and dishware, and a dishwasher.  Unfortunately there is no washing machine and supposedly there is only one common one for all 89 apartments so we’ll see how that goes…. Maybe I need to look for a laundromat.  It does have an iron in case we have to « repasser » les vêtements.  It also has windows that can open so maybe we can string a clothesline from one window to the next…

At the beginning of our 6 weeks they will give us a public transportation pass for us to use.  The Aix en Bus system seems pretty good to me with multiple buses (03, 08, 13, M2) stopping near the apartment, although the British American Institute where we have classes is only a 12 minute walk away (that’ll be 20 minutes for us).  The best bus to take is probably the #8 which stops about a block from the school.  I’m assuming the majority of the time we will just walk to places unless it’s to a location outside the historic center of Aix, like to a Hypermarché.

Bus #8 from Adagio Aparthotel to the British American Institute 

There are also little buses that run through the historic center but frankly I’d be embarrassed to get on them …. Wait.  Maybe they wouldn’t be so bad since they are electric buses meant to cover the pedestrian areas that regular buses can’t get to.  They are called the Diablines and there are 3 routes.  You flag them down to get on them and they run Monday - Saturday, from 8:30 am to 7:30 pm.  They don’t run on Sundays or holidays.

I am quitting here because Blogger is a pain to use on the iPad when the posting gets too long.  It starts misbehaving.

A bientôt!

Chemin d’Arles / Via Tolosana to Santiago de Compostela

Near the Adagio Aparthotel in Aix-en-Provence there is a road called Route de Galice.  Galice?  Galicia?  Was this a pilgrim road connecting to the Camino de Santiago?  It isn’t a far-fetched idea since we ran across markings for the Camino in Switzerland.  It turns out that indeed there was a pilgrim route from Arles through Toulouse and over the Pyrenees that connected with the Camino Aragonés that runs through Jaca in Spain and connects with the Camino Frances at Puente la Reina.  And the significance of Arles was that it was also a starting point for the pilgrim route to Rome.

The road from Arles to Rome, the Via Aurelia, goes through Aix on its way to Genoa, Lucca, Siena and Rome and the Italian section was built by the Roman consul Gaius Aurelius Cotta in 241 BC.  In 13 BC the road was extended to Arles, a significant Roman town, by the Emperor Augustus.  Recently a hiking route has been mapped out (Grandes Randonnee GR653-A) to trace it but it goes up into the Maritime Alps rather than through Nice and the coastal cities.  I can’t imagine the Romans building a road through the mountains when they could go along the coast line.  But maybe the new route is to appeal to hikers and avoid the cities and towns.  One hiking blog mentioned that on parts of the trail he didn’t see a single person, and this was in August, the height of the tourist season, but maybe they were avoiding the heat.

If you want to explore the route more closely, Les Amis des Chemins de Compostelle et de Rome offer an interactive map.  Their website is in French but with Google Translate…. We will let you know if we run across any scallop shells.