Aix en Provence

Right now, I am sitting in an Internet cafe in Aix [having just made the last update] and am contemplating both what came before and what will come after. What came before was my leaving Locquirec [or Lokireg in Breton]. This is a sad thing; I enjoyed my stay there very much. Yesterday, Nicole drove me all over the countryside, looking at calvaires [not my photos, but a good representation for you who do not know]... these are carved stone depictions of the life of Christ [various bits, especially the stations of the cross] that are positioned both in churchyards, and at intersections, both major and minor, around the countryside. They are quite fascinating. We also visited St. Pol-de-Leon, [named after a killer of dragons, tamer of animals, and possible bell thief]; Roscoff, where Mary Stuart hid after losing the war of succession; and Saint Thegonnec, a sleepy little town with a gigantic church and the most elaborate calvaire that I saw.

Our other stop yesterday was to Morlaix, to try to make a train reservation so I could come here, to Aix. It turned out to be a little complicated. In Morlaix, the fellow could only get me here via Paris [other possibilities showed on the Internet] and from Paris to Aix in 2nd class, at 5 pm [after starting out in Morlaix at 7:23, after having to get there from Locquirec...]. I have no objection to 2nd class, really, even though my Eurail pass is for 1st... it was the almost 6 hour wait in Paris that I didn't like, getting to Aix... actually about now, surprisingly [it is just past 8 pm], some coincidence... When I got to Paris, I went from the Gare Montparnasse to Gare de Lyon and once there stood in line for a long time to ask whether I could get on an earlier train... voila! Luckily, the guy worked some magic and I was in 1st on the 1:30 train. I also wisely asked him to make me a reservation for Aix to Rome [he seemed so professional, why not use his talents?] and ended up finding out that this was probably not the best spot, from a schedule standpoint, to divide up the trip from Brittany to Italy. It turns out [perhaps because of the late hour of the reservation] that I will have to go to Lyon, then Chambery, then Milan, then Rome... quite the elaborate trip. The plus side is that I will be able to see the French Alps... I've only travelled this route before at night.

Well somewhere in there I think I expressed what came before... and what comes after, you might ask? Dinner, I say. I'll tell you what I have, later.