Sainte Victoire

Lest you think that the continuing university strike means I spend my days sunning myself and sipping French coffee, read on: yesterday, I climbed a mountain.

As you may have seen from other pictures, la Montagne Sainte-Victoire is a truly imposing mountain that towers above Aix. The peak is around 3300 feet high and the mountain's big claim to fame is that Paul Cezanne painted it scores of times from innumerable different vantage points.

Every year, students on our exchange program climb it, and yesterday, I and five others continued the tradition.

We took a bus from the center of Aix that drops you off by the Barrage de Bimont, a giant dam at the base of the mountain. From there, we followed a rocky path that twists through woods, up craggy faces, and along barren cliffs. That said, it wasn't too difficult for college students without hiking boots to climb.

There are plenty of stops along the way; from each successive lookout, the view down over Provence becomes progressively more breaktaking. You can see Aix-en-Provence, the nuclear power plant that illuminates it, and all the hills and mountains for miles.

Yesterday was a warm day, and it wasn't until we got close to the summit that the winds really started to pick up. Once they did, they were piercing, practically a full-force Mistral that had nothing between its cold northern origins and us, atop a mountain.

It took about an hour and a half to reach the summit. At the top stands a giant cross called the Croix de Provence as well as a small shelter in which we huddled against the wind and ate lunch. Despite the shocking cold of the wind, the view from the summit is incredible. We were lucky enough to have gorgeous blue skies for our visit, although it did get hazy in the distance.
Coming back down took less time, obviously, but still close to an hour and a half. Afterwards, we ate well-earned ice cream back in Aix. I was thoroughly worn out after the trip, but I also had a huge sense of accomplishment: I mean, we climbed a mountain!

It feels redundant to say that the strikes are continuing. It's really unclear how long they'll last; everytime people expect an end, the strikes seem to ramp up for even longer. The good news is that most of my classes have resumed, except for two. And those two classes should be replaced by equivalent classes from the exchange program. In other words, as much as the strike might continue at La Fac, it's essentially over for me. Which is great news!