This past weekend my friends and I hiked the mountain that inspired many of Cézanne’s paintings. He painted over sixty landscapes of Mount Saint Victoire, which is terribly impressive, but also makes me wonder why someone would paint one subject for years galore. I guess it takes some dedication. The paintings by Cezanne were probably more picturesque and relaxing than my experience. That is not to say that I did not have a fun time, but knowing my life, nothing is ever seamless.
Photo by author
The first part of our journey was not unusual. We took the “moderate” route around the mountain because I was the only one who was interested in taking the more “extreme” path climbing over some boulders or something. Honestly, it was probably a good idea, since, within the first ten minutes, I managed to almost fall twice while tripping over sticks the size of a pencil. To my defense, I was eating a chunk of baguette and walking on the side of a hill at the same time. After wandering around for a bit we made our way to the actual hiking path. It was more like an elevated walking path, but it did cross over a very tall dam. I only knew it was tall because that is what my friends said. I am terribly afraid of heights, I once climbed a lighthouse on the shore and was terribly close to having a panic attack. For all you who thought you could see a photo from the top of the Eiffel tower, I’ll get you a postcard instead. I walked straight down the middle of the path, not taking many moments to peek over the edge.
Photo courtesy of author
The remaining part of the day was trying to find the bus stop because where the bus dropped us off would not be the same location where the bus would pick us up. I am positive there was an easier way to get to the bus stop, but I have no idea what it was. And like I said before…nothing is ever seamless. We ended up walking about a mile on farmland that I am sure was private. Luckily there was no angry French man yelling at us mangy kids to get off his lawn. When we finally found the bus stop we discovered that it was only a few feet away from a cemetery. I thought it was possibly one of the most awkward spots for a bus stop. As we sat and waited a car pulled up and nothing happened. Which doesn’t really sound that strange, but under the particular circumstances of tramping through some farmland to end up next to a cemetery I decided to take the rest of my baguette out of my backpack and sit there and watch. No one got out of the car, no one got in, it just sat there. It was there for an awkward amount of time and we were convinced we were about to witness a drug deal, but the car quickly drove away. It was all extremely conspicuous. The bus finally came to take us back to the center of the city, but it happened to take us through streets that had more potholes than any street in New Jersey. I had a whopping headache and a pain in my tailbone by the time I got off the bus. I had a blast, I was able to witness another part of France that I never thought I would be seeing in a million years even though it may not have been completely seamless.