MEET MADAME CÉZANNE

Posted on January 11, 2015December 30, 2015 by Susan Manfull

Post-impressionist artist Paul Cézanne, born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839, spent most of his sixty-six years in his beloved Aix and he died there in 1906. He grew up there, studied law at the university, took art classes at the city’s Musée Granet—even won a second-place prize for his painting at that museum—and famously painted nearby Mont Sainte-Victoire some five dozen times. Cézanne is generally regarded as the most famous painter to emerge from Aix-en-Provence and is certainly regarded a...

CALISSONS, CROQUETTES, BEAUMES DE VENISE, AND TEA FROM PALAIS DES THÉS: THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS IN PROVENCE AT CHRISTMAS

Posted on December 8, 2013December 30, 2015 by Susan Manfull

“Calissons” is the first of a three-part series that focuses on what you may find in Provence after the “big supper” (otherwise known as the “Gros Souper”) on Christmas Eve, Called “the thirteen desserts of Christmas” or “Les Treize Desserts de Noël,” tradition dictates that the desserts consist of dried fruit and nuts, fresh fruit, and sweets totaling 13 desserts to represent Jesus Christ and his 12 apostles at the Last Supper. The desserts are set out after Midnight Mass, all at once, on...

10 MARKETS IN PROVENCE: AIX-EN-PROVENCE MOVES TO THE TOP IN THE SPRING

Posted on March 18, 2012January 23, 2016 by Susan Manfull

With spring around the corner and warm temperatures to follow, the market in Aix-en-Provence is at the very top of my list of 10 favorite markets. The city’s famous flower market will soon be an irresistible cacophony of color, scent, and variety, a veritable garden in the midst of the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. It is the place to be on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. We usually start our market expedition here in the flower market although we always park sou...

4 DECEMBER STARTS CHRISTMAS SEASON IN PROVENCE: PLANT YOUR WHEAT SEEDS AND GET OUT YOUR SANTONS!

Posted on December 5, 2011November 27, 2015 by Susan Manfull

Department stores in the United States ring in the Christmas season the day after Halloween—with the possible exception of those states that mark the Day of the Dead—and the rest of us fall into place when we toss out the turkey carcass at the end of November, depending on where Thanksgiving lands.In Provence, December 4th marks the start of the Christmas season. It’s a long season—we all know the French like their holidays and I say that in the most commendable even covetous manner. ...

MEET ME AT LES DEUX GARÇONS: A SEQUEL TO “MIDNIGHT IN PARIS”?

Posted on November 28, 2011December 30, 2015 by Susan Manfull

Should Woody Allen and Owen Wilson decide to follow Picasso to the South of France, surely Les Deux Garçons would feature prominently. Like Les Deux Magots, the famous café hang-out of Gertrude Stein’s Lost Generation in 1920s, Les Deux Garçons has long been a magnet for artists and writers in Aix-en-Provence. Les Deux Garçons’ roots reach back to 1792, but 53 cours Mirabeau had a long history before it became a café. The 17th century mansion is first mentioned in ...

DON’T FORGET PROVENCE IN THE WINTER

Posted on November 8, 2010December 23, 2015 by Susan Manfull

Chapelle St-Sixte As one drives toward Les Alpilles, along the D24 between the tiny villages of Orgon and Eygalières, about 30 minutes from Lourmarin, there’s a very tiny chapel. Framed by lovely cypress trees van Gogh surely would have painted had he ventured a little further from the hospital in St Remy, the 12th century chapel stands atop a stony knoll now dotted with olive and almond trees and an occasional patch of grass. Chapelle St-Sixte was erected on the s...

PROVENCE TO COMMEMORATE “THE FORGOTTEN D-DAY”

Posted on August 15, 2010December 30, 2015 by Susan Manfull

Twenty six years ago today, August 15, 1944, Allied troops landed in Provence to help liberate Europe from the Nazis and end World War II. The Allied invasion of Provence, code-named Operation Dragoon, got overshadowed by the better-known D-Day invasion in Normandy two months before (June 6, 1944). So much so that it got dubbed “The forgotten D-Day.” Yet 66 years later, Provence is strewn with memorials to the Provence landings. And this August 15, at least one community will devote the whole...

ESCAPE PARIS TO PROVENCE ON THE TGV

Posted on August 8, 2010April 22, 2017 by Susan Manfull

Perhaps you’d like to escape the sticky heat of Paris this August by traveling to Provence. You can do so in just a little over three hours in the quiet comfort aboard the high-speed train-- le Train a Grande Vitesse, or TGV, as the French call it. (Conversely, you can add a quick Paris TGV trip to your Provence agenda….although we don’t recommend doing so in August!) Powered by electric motors, the French TGV was originally conceived in the 1960s right after Japan launched its foray into hig...