All Cézanne all the time

Today, I had a Cézanne kind of day... I walked all over Aix, looking at the places where he ate, drank, lived, was born, died, et cetera... then I went to the Musée Granet, where they have 9 nice works by, you guessed it, Cézanne (as well as a whole museum's worth of other fine works and stuff). After this, I walked to L'Atelier Cézanne, which is the studio he designed and had built; it has all the bric-a-brac one sees in his still-life paintings and a lot of his other belongings. (Here is a link to a website, in case you don't know his work... Cézanne...) It is situated in a very nice garden (painted often by the Master) and is a great site. After L'Atelier, I walked up to Les Lauves, the prospect from which he painted Mont Sainte-Victoire (see link above for works). While at the Musée Granet, I picked up a box of little felt markers, so I took advantage of their existence and did a little drawing of the mountain... it isn't great, but I haven't done much in the way of art in a long time, and it felt good. A guy came up and looked over my shoulder at what I was doing... he made a few nice comments, and then we discussed Cézanne's reasoning in including a lot of clouds in his pictures of MSV, when, according to my new friend, there are no clouds in Provence... today, he is pretty much right... it was a scorcher. Oh, and much of this discussion was conducted in French, so I am pretty pleased with myself.

Another thing I did today is to buy some callisons... these are a specialty of Aix and are quite tasty.

It is time for dinner, which reminds me to update you about what I ate yesterday... with apologies to Melinda, I will cut and paste a section from an email I sent her: "last night, I ate a lot. I went to a Tunisian restaurant and had a great meal, starting with a variety of appetizers (cucumbers, tomatoes, tabouleh, something like baba ghanoush, a stuffed vine leaf, a little salad with carrots, apple, peppers, and a very spicy dressing), then I had lamb couscous... it came with a bunch of lovely vegetables in a broth. This was washed down with a really good rosé from Tunisia, and followed by a shredded phylo pastry stuffed with nuts and drenched in honey, and tea with mint. The portions were enormous! I waddled away from there and had to go for a very big walk before getting back to the hotel, just to relieve some pressure... I wouldn't have had dessert, except it was a menu formule, so I did."

And now I am off.