I dressed myself in a floral blue dress and wedges, unsure exactly how I was going to be spending my first weekend in Aix-en-Provence. I figured none the less that I would at least look nice after the rough weeks of switching homestays and switching classes and not being able to travel to Nice for the weekend because of said switching homestays. Looking at myself in the mirror, my phone was forever in its abroad position of being charged connected to the the character chord connected to the European adapter connected to the extension chord outlet. It beeped.



Opening it up to the only way to get a hold on of me on the Facebook messenger I never thought anyone used until now, my new friend Braden who also did not go to Nice was already typing a second message after the first hello.

"So, you want to climb a mountain today?"

I turned back to my reflection in the mirror in my pretty summer dress. I looked so damn pretty. With a groan I stripped down and redressed into black leggings and a slightly too loose pink tank top before I messaged back. While we set up a spot to meet before getting on the bus for the journey to the base of the mountain, I slipped on my trusty yellow Keds.

Because what else would you climb a mountain in?




Yes, I know. Probably actual sneakers, bus I was not too concerned. There would probably be a nice trail path and some shade as we hiked. It would be a nice fun day. So, appearing slightly homeless and very un-French as other women passed by in their cobblestone steady heels, I met up with Braden for a veggie filled brunch lunch at Toasty. Then it was time...to find the bus...to get off the bus almost at the wrong stop...to get off the bus at the correct stop...and to begin climbing Mt. Sainte Victoire.

I was pumped. I was ready. I was already sweating from the heat of 1 p.m. sunlight shining down on my shoulders as we began on the red and white trail. Another couple began the hike with us after getting off the bus at the same time.

She was from France.

He was from Columbia.

They were in love and talked all about the places they had been and other mountains they had climbed, both together and alone.

They talked, Braden and I-- ok, mostly I was trying to cover the fact that if I opened my mouth it would be to gasp for air. Cute French-Columbia couple were keeping a pace as we scaled the trails already hefty incline. They barely looked like they were breaking a sweat as we all paused to reapply sunscreen and then the next time for a little sip of water or two or three, and then the next time when they pretended not to see us stop as I collapsed to the rocky ground for another break as they kept hiking onward.

"I am not sure I am going to make it. I am dying."

Braden laughed, as I am not going to lie, I proclaim my death quite often. Then he saw my face. "Oh, seriously?"

I wasn't sure.






We sat there as I decided and drunk most of my water in the sliver of shade. I didn't even care as ants began to climb up my dirt covered Keds. I was not sure that I was going to make it. We could easily turn back right then, but then I took out my phone and took a photo of the trail before us. I took a photo of Braden's uneasy face that was now to be the face of determination as I stood up.

"Well, let's go."

"Yeah?"

I thought over my answer. I suddenly remembered the last time I went hiking almost two years ago in New Jersey on a camping trip with my first roommate, Allison. After watching a Yoga with Adriene video we adopted one of the mantras for that trip. I decided I needed to bring it back out.

"I accept."

We kept hiking. The trail got hotter and the path got smaller as we began to climb dirt and rocks smoothed over from many others doing this same climb. Soon I looked over the edge we stood walking on and could see nearly all of Provence it seemed like. With a laugh that sounded less and less like me gasping for air, I kept moving a new sort of spring in my step as we then saw the monastrary above us.

We were at least halfway there, if not more. We joked as we hiked and took moments to suck down the last bits of water we had as if we were in the desert. Before I knew it though, something happened all of a sudden.

I made it.



I climbed Mount Sainte Victoire.

So high I could almost touch the clouds, we sat on the edge of the cross where the couple was already there sitting and eating the bread they had somehow managed to lug.

"You made it!" They called.

Yeah, we made it.

I got to see the amazing view I'll never forget to prove it as Braden shared half of his peanut butter filled Clif bar that made our mouths dry from lack of water before heading back down each boulder and rock. We got lost on a separate trail on the way down and took the bus for an extra hour more than necessary, but the day we climbed Mt. Sainte Victoire was a day to be remembered.

To celebrate, for our first Aix meal out? Pasta and Provence Rose.



Amazing.

To be honest I may even climb that mountain again someday. Or maybe another. Is this am I a hiker now?

Maybe.

Someday.

Known as one of France's most beautiful towns, a group of buildings are nestled into the base of the mountain, a star to evoke Saint Mary hangs between the two. The star that currently hangs above the town was made in 1957. It is the eleventh star to put up, though in 1995 it had to be recovered in gold leaf after having a fall, but ultimately was put back up to look over Moustiers once again.

Moustiers, though I came to see the star and the gorgeous town, is also quite known for its china. Still they have potters that emulate the china with small patterns that you definitely want to spend some time looking at, and if the price alright to you, maybe take home a piece that seems to be from another century.

Imagine sitting down to that at the kitchen table.

Moutstiers is a lovely place I could only imagine the most beautiful of love stories to be told. Lovers could be walking down the narrow streets and kisses shared in all the little nooks and crannies this town has to offer.

There was a story here, I knew it, though I am still not sure what exactly it was. Maybe one day, it will come to me during another hazy summer day.


Within the town, we hiked up the rocky roads to where a small well was. Slipping water bottles out from bags everyone began to fill their bottles.

"Miracle water," one said.

It is true in a way. It is said that one should fill their bottle of water and drink it while hiking up the Moustiers' Notre Dame, a chapel high between the two mountains. Once one made it to the top to the chapel under the star, you were told to make a wish.


The day however was not over as I strained to wander and see all Moustier had to offer. Rushed from the beautiful town to the next event, I definitely recommend taking your time, or at least an hour or two to enjoy Moustiers.

Even if, like me, it was time to go to the beautiful lavender fields Provence dreams are made of.

While in Provence, even if you may not always be close to make a day trip to Greece to see the gorgeous waters, there are plenty of places to spend a day aside of the water and gasp at how blue they are. One place to this is to take a day trip to the Gorges Du Verdon. Pack a picnic basket, a hat, and be ready to get your toes wet to fully enjoy the gorges.


The whole day starting at the gorges was planned via Georges! While living in Aix-en-Provence for almost two months, I luckily got plenty of opportunities if I wanted to take weekend day trips with a local guide who hosted bus trips, Georges.

Throughout the summer weeks he made sure to offer trips from local to as far away as Monte Carlo for those to enjoy, trip usually also accompanied by information on the bus, usually spoken in French, so brush up on those French words if you are still learning as I am!

For about twenty euro the entire trip of seeing the gorges, Moustiers, and the lavender fields was taken care of. The bus left outside the Grand Hotel Roi Rene in the early morning. From Aix-en-Provence to the Lac de Sainte Croix, the trip is approximately two hours though it definitely felt shorter.


Though that may have been my excitement talking.

The Gorges du Verdon is a canyon that stretches over fifteen miles and about 2,000 feet deep. Set in south east France, north of Nice, the Verdon River flows through the gorge and into our beautiful and relaxing setting of the Lac de Sainte Croix.

Though the Gorges du Verdon is the deepest gorge in France, land the lake itself is the second largest, let's be honest and say that all these grand facts are not the exact reason to visit.



Crossing the bridge over the stunning aquamarine water that flows from the man made lake of Sainte-Croix, I am pretty sure that I have only seen such a color before in a Crayola box.




Then I was off for to the next stop of the day. To Moustiers-Sainte-Marie!

Though I didn't live like French royalty while I was there, I certainly enjoyed my time while in Versailles. After a train ride that I almost got lost on, I wandered around the corner through the city and I was there, staring into a building of patterned gold.

I also saw an already long forming line an hour before it opened, but that is besides the point. The luxury! The beauty! I spent my day wandering Versailles through each room before heading to the gardens. There, I spent even more time, letting myself be lost within the hedges of the most lovely landscape created, filled with flowers and fountains and of course, ice cream for when the sun got a little too warm.











After wandering hours and further breaking in my shoes I brought for the weekend, it was time to go back to my hostel to rest up for my final next day, but if you have an extra day while in Paris to travel out towards magnificent Versailles, I definitely suggest it. Be sure you get there early with time to walk and a full camera battery!

The Bloggess has been serving up the best in comedic blog posts since blogging was a real sort of thing to do with your life. In her first memoir, Let's Pretend it Never Happened (A mostly true memoir) the realness of life and comedy within it does not stop on a computer screen. Nope, you can now read the hilarious Jenny Lawson in print.

Taxidermy animals and adorable marriage goals included.

photo credit: the bloggess

Recently I have been on a memoir kick and I don't think that my love for them will stop after reading this book that I picked up from the free book shelf within my study abroad school. Someone like me it seemed could just not fit this wonderful paperback back into their carry-on.

What does fit however, is the awkward memories of me laughing in public while reading this book of adventures told by an anxiety afflicted woman who I felt like I understood very well already just by finding out that alone. In unfiltered detail, she tells about the moments throughout her life. This goes from being a poor kid in a town no one really knows of in Texas, having a dad who I wouldn't ever want to say had something really cool he wanted to show me (see back to "taxidermy included"), and finally arriving at the point of her life now where Jenny has a family and very kind husband of her own who will totally fight her on if Jesus could be considered a zombie or not.

Again, goals.

The stories at times are as crazy as possibly Jenny may call herself, but overall they are great in that weird "no, seriously, you cannot make this stuff up" sort of way. Each story also only managed to increase my admiration and appreciation for Jenny Lawson page by page, both for her view of the world and for her ease of writing, even if it isn't always showing her life in the best of lights as we like to usually let others see out in the open. Especially on the internet. But in the end, she is right. Bloggers write because they want to be heard and usually are too awkward and antisocial to actually shout.

And thank goodness The Bloggess was.

Be prepared to laugh and cringe and do all the sorts of things you need a memoir to do, especially if you will be reading it as I was, sitting in an airport waiting for my perpetually delayed flight. My fellow passengers didn't think I was strange at all...

About the Author

Out for the day with my creative writing class for another adventure that did not turn out to be "just getting a baguette in the park" my professors took us to Baux Castle. But that was not our first stop. No, our first stop was in Les Baux-de-Provence, and quite possibly the best art exhibition I have ever seen, or rather, been a part of.

Carrières de Lumières.





Previously the site of a quarry, this now cave like structure is home to a changing art exhibit that immerses viewers like myself and the rest of my class that had no idea previously what we were walking into.

First thought I had as I handed my ticket over and pushed past the curtain was that we were walking into a dark pitch black cave.

Then I saw the light. Many lights actually. A light show! Art.

Entitled, "Picasso and the Spanish Masters," artists such as Picasso, Goya, and Sorolla are presented over the walls of quarry's cave like structure of white limestone. This show continues to run from March 2, 2018 to 6 January 6, 2019. Plenty of time to make this art experience a must on your list when visiting Provence.




As we watched the show happen on a loop around us, we were free to wander around each wall, up each incline of stone in order to see every possible angle the works of art had in store.

Music played all around me as I watched, feeling the need to dance-- but don't worry, I did indeed restrain myself this time.


Never have I been so amazed by an art exhibition. By Picasso, even! who I had been seeing scattered all throughout Provence as a headliner to many art galleries this summer. The hour I had to spend wandering and simply standing still to see the art move to the music all around me, seemed to pass in seconds. When I walked out the only way I could describe the show was, amazing.

Because it was.

Amazing.

Out of this world. Worthy of a place among all art shows and galleries forevermore.

In Aix-en-Provence and need something to do? In the city of Aix, art and history surrounds you every day, and over the past few weeks that I have spent in Aix, I had been to quite a few of the museums Aix has to offer to get an even closer look at the art Provence was built on.

Here are a few of the amazing ones to visit through day, and may I suggest a picnic to relax in between at Pavillion Vendome?

Cezanne's Studio

For art enthusiasts and admirers, be sure to stop in for a quick visit to Cezanne's Studio where one can see all of his furniture, still life model of fruit featured in many paintings (including one in Musee Granet), and work tools, well preserved. For a guided tour, just be sure you go at time that speaks your preferred English or French.

Musee Granet

A public museum holding paintings and sculptures dating back to antiquity. It features paintings from Paul Cezanne, as well as paintings hosted for exhibition. While I was there this included a large section of Picasso. If I had to change anything of my time in the museum wandering through the paintings mainly on the bottom floor, it would be to spend some time with the marbles the group I was with wandered past on the way out. They looked lonely, and the one sculpture pointing at me was in need of an Instagram opportunity.

Musee du Viel Aix

Set in a historic summer home for a family who most likely lived up north long ago, this is now a museum of the city of Aix-en-Provence holding collections of antique prints, paintings, dolls, and document plans

Pavillon Vendome

A very short walk away from city center, Pavillon Vendome is situated in a French formal garden, stay off the grass, but do spend some time in the area to soak in the sun and beautiful greenery before heading into the grand house that looks like it could be out of Jane Austen. Inside the museum, the collection is mainly comprised of portraits and Provencal furniture as well as certain contemporary art exhibitions.



And though not a specific museum...

Watch out for Art Exhibition and Open Studios

Beautiful art is everywhere! Exhibitions throughout center city are prominently displayed usually for all to enjoy, and if you are looking for a little less commitment from walking through rows of oil panting, walk around the city of Aix instead. You are sure to come across a studio or art seller around each corner to admire.

When I came to Europe I thought, yeah, I am good. I am not going to buy any books.

I was wrong.

No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

This was book number one. I went into Book in Bar, the cutest little mainly English bookstore in Aix-en-Provence and saw it lying on the table- but no. No, Kendra, I told myself. You are not going to let one of your first purchases in France be a book. You buy too many books already. 

So I put poor lonely Eleanor back down.

Very few days later I went back, and it was gone. Eleanor Oliphant in the EU cover, paperback edition that we did not have in the US was gone! My eyes widened to where The Lesser Bohemians took its place, searching just be to be sure it wasn't covered up by another novel. It was only after hyping myself up for a few moments, I went towards the counter.

"Bonjour."

"Bonjour," the woman at the desk responded, stopping her typing. She waited for me.

Deep breathes. I had this. "Tu parles anglais?"

At least I had enough words to hopefully switch to English. After all how was I supposed to ask if they had Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, otherwise? Tu a Eleanor Oliphant est ca va? No. I am pretty sure that is wrong on a number of levels.




She smiled and said yes to the first question. No, to the second.

"But we are ordering a new shipment. It should be in on Wednesday or Thursday if you don't mind. I can put your name down."

"Ah, ok. Oui. C'est bon." And by this I meant awesome, now I can come into Book in Bar everyday to just be around the books and annoy the staff by pleasantly asking if the book came in early. Score!

By Thursday though, right on the day they said. Eleanor was in. That evening back home instead of doing my art history homework, I set to reading.

Right away I was struck by the epigraph that begins the novel written by Olivia Laing in The Lonely City.

"...loneliness is hallmarked by an intense desire to bring the experience to a close; something which cannot be achieved by sheer willpower or by simply getting out more, but only by developing intimate connections. This is far easier said than done, especially for people whose loneliness arises from a state of loss or exile or prejudice, who have reason to fear or mistrust as well as long for the society of others.
Loneliness is accretive, extending and perpetuating itself. Once it becomes impacted, it is by no means easy to dislodge."

First of all, I rarely read epigraphs but this one was something else, completely summing up the story as well as how I was beginning to feel myself as a person alone in a new country for the next so many weeks.




As if I needed anymore incentive, I read one for hours into the night, falling into the critical yet utterly unique voice that Eleanor brings forth as she begins to step out from her self-isolation and into a new sort of social interaction she had not experienced before.

“People don’t like these facts, but I can’t help that. If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.”

Along with that social interaction I can firmly say that I have not read a book like this ever before with easy frankness and a distinct narrative that does not shy away from everything Eleanor is from someone who is interesting, quirky, awkward, and completely emotional overall. She is after all, a woman who in the beginning of the novel tells you straight up that on Friday she goes home from work with a frozen margarita pizza and two bottles of vodka to make it to Monday.

Most of all I feel like in this day in age where social interaction is no longer a strict requirement, Eleanor's story is all too relatable.

By the end of this novel however, I was floored with how much I felt that I had lived through with Eleanor even though there were not a whole lot of different events taking place in the book. More like, realizations. We are show almost all the sorts of kindness and forms of love there is in the world to ultimately bring forth the idea that it is never to late to make a change in one's life for the better. A lesson that Eleanor learns and I personally think I still need to at times.

Eleanor's character definitely grew on me the more I read to definitely make this thought provoking and emotionally trying novel one of my favorites of the year, simply by the fact that I haven't stopped thinking about Eleanor, Glen the cat, Raymond, and the entire story itself since I have put it down.

T'is a rare strange novel this one.