today i climbed a mountain, hurrah!
it turned out that the bus to the base of mont st victoire left even earlier than we thought, at 8:25 this morning. nick and i were both pretty sleepy getting up that early (ok, so maybe it was just me since nick has been getting up that early all week for class), but we made it to the bus and were on our way to vauvenargues. we got off the bus about 3 kilometers before we reached the town and were right at the base of the trail leading to the top of mont st. victoire.
this is a relatively small mountain at only 1000 meters high, but since we were starting from almost sea level, it was a bit of a climb. the first part of the trail led through the forest and was very steep in places; this was the worst part in my opinion. after a while the trail became more rocky, less defined, and more open as the trees gave way to scrubby bush-type plants. nick didn’t like this part as much since you had to be really careful with footing to avoid tripping or turning an ankle, but i liked it better because it wasn’t as steep. i can deal with rocky footing much better than steepness. 🙂
after about an hour and a half we reached the small chapel about 50 meters below the top. i was amazed that we got up there so quickly, because from the road where the bus let us off, the top looked quite far away and i had doubts that we would make it to the top in time to get back down to catch the bus back to aix. but we made it with time to spare. we looked around and greeted some of the old men working at the chapel. nick asked them on our way back down and it turns out they climb up to the chapel every thursday to do maintainence work. every thursday! it reminded me of the old german men becca and i saw on the germany/austria border after climbing up a very large hill near fussen–even 80-year-old men are in better shape for climbing mountains than i am! ah well.
we climbed the 50 meters or so to the top of the mountain, which has a large cross on a pedestal sitting there. very descriptively, it’s called the “croix de provence” (cross of provence). it was a tricky climb to the cross, and it wasn’t made any simpler by the gale force provencal wind blowing over the top of the mountain. i’m serious, this wind was unbelieveable!! i took a brief video clip with my camera just to capture the sound of it roaring through the few trees that were able to grow next to the chapel despite all the limestone; i’ll have to post it when i get back to houston. it was a bit scary. i experienced a fear of heights for only the second time i can remember, and i was worried that a gust in the wrong direction would send me tumbling, but fortunately the wind blew us toward the mountain, so it actually helped with the steep climb to the cross. nevertheless, i held on very tightly at the top.
the view was absolutely spectacular. we could see aix down below, and farther in the distance we spotted the aqueduct that we visited yesterday. far away i saw the bridge that the tgv uses, and amazingly, i happened to be looking at just the right time and saw a tgv speed across the bridge like a silver bullet. farther still, we could see the mediterranean and marseille! and looking in the other direction, we could see ridges and valleys and finally way, way off in the distance, at least 50 miles away and probably more, we could see the beginning of the alps, snow-capped and everything! it was absolutely stunning. i took some pictures, but the alps don’t show up as well in them as they did to our eyes. it was fantastic. we couldn’t have asked for a clearer day. there was hardly a cloud in the sky!
the fierce wind (not to mention cold wind–i was wearing a long sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, wool coat, gloves, scarf, and hat to keep warm even after getting the workout of climbing up all that way) finally drove us back down to the chapel and then we started our descent. we came down a slightly different way, and passed a sign. i could only read that it said “danger” but nick read the whole thing and then announced with slight alarm that climbing to the cross (which of course we had just done) was temporarily forbidden due to the hazard of sliding rock and the instability of the small building next to the cross. so oops on our part, but secretly i’m glad we didn’t see the sign; it would have sucked to have gotten all the way up there only to have to turn around 10 meters from the top.
when we got back to the edge of the trees, the wind was finally blocked enough to be comfortable again. we got back to the bus stop about 3 and a half hours after we’d left it, and were just in time to catch it down the road into vauvenargues, where we saw a chateau that pablo picasso lived in towards the end of his life, and where he is buried. it was not open to the public, in fact, the sign simply said “not open to the public. please do not insist. the museum is in paris.” as if we could just zoom off to paris right then. 😉 vauvenargues was a nice little town though, and eventually nick and i ended up just resting on some steps in the sun waiting for the bus to come back.
and now i’m here while nick is in class. we stopped by the grocery store to get ingredients for dinner tonight; nick invited 5 of his friends over to eat with us, so that should be fun. i’m already hungry though…i’ll never make it till 9:30. i’ll have to find a snack. europeans eat dinner so late! and they always have multiple courses…appetizers, entree, and dessert at minimum it seems. anyway. i am exhausted. i think i’m going to chop some tomatoes and then take a quick nap.
(12:33 a.m.)
what is it with people getting engaged?? this makes two engagements in one week!
