A spring morning amble through Aix-en-Provence

It's eight o'clock on a spring Saturday morning when I open my eyes to the delicious knowledge that we are in Aix-en-Provence. Denis throws open the shutters of our hotel room, and we are delighted to see a deep blue sky, etched by the carefully pruned plane trees reaching upward like sculpted hands.



In a hurry to get outside into that sunshine, we jump in the shower and throw on some clothes. We head to the town's main street--the beautifully named Cour Mirabeau, with its mossy fountains and more beautiful trees. We decide (actually it's no contest) to have our breakfast in the classic Deux Garçons café. There, the choice spots in the sun and against the shelter of the wall are all already taken by the habitués of the place--ladies and gentlemen of the troisième age.



Now, don't you find this a much more pleasant expression (the third age), replete with acceptance and devoid of condescension, than the depressing 'twilight years' or the mawkish 'golden years'? The 'third age', hmmm.... I steal glimpses of these serene folks, reading their papers, sipping their coffees, and conversing together. If I could live my troisième age in Aix, I think, growing old could be delightful.



I'm distracted by another typically French scene taking place on the sidewalk in front of the café. It's the dog-meets-dog, and owner-encounters-owner social interaction. In this case, the two identical terriers are on leashes, but often as not, French dogs promenade leashless with their owners--even in the streets of Paris. I've always been confounded by how French urban dogs can be so civil! There's no barking, no running after the hot female across the street, no lunging for a sniff. Rather, an urbane doggy encounter, with demure, civilized sniffing all around, nose to nose first, mind you!



Denis reminds me how much we want to do today, and I gulp the rest of my coffee. We head north toward the marketplace, but are forced to pause to admire the tracery of this wisteria vine in full fragrant flower against a soft yellow wall. I watch some sleepy honeybees nuzzling the blossoms and imagine the life of a bee. But after a moment, the bee that is me is drawn onward by the market. There's pretty much nothing I love so much as a market, and the one at Aix is one of the best I know. Luckily, the Aix market day is Saturday, allowing weekend warriors like us to experience it.




Pretty soon, we hit the periphery of the market, a fact first announced by a flower vendor, or more particularly, by this pail of ranunculus glowing in the early morning light like a bucket full of sunlight. Then my eye is caught by a vendor who has every imaginable type of tiny kitchen gadget spread out on his table. Most wonderful, he has pouring spouts for olive oil adapted to every type of bottle--corks of all diameters and even screw caps. This incredibly useful trinket is just as incredibly hard to find, so I buy a large assortment. Also irresistable--a glass gizmo mounted on a cork for measuring doses of pastis direct from the bottle. I would have continued shopping, except that Denis reminds me we are returning by train and will have to haul back all purchases...Reluctantly, I tear myself away from the manual meat grinder I was eyeing.

We head to the square where most of the vegetable and fruit vendors spread their glorious wares. Right in the center, the bonne soeurs are set up at their usual spot. These two nuns, both definitely in the troisième age, are no-nonsense and just a little bit stern, as you would expect them to be. But their produce--idiosyncratic smatterings of vegetables, herbs, flowers, and fruit which they've obviously grown themselves, are grown and presented with love. Their mixed bouquets are always especially lovely: a mix of garden flowers, wildflowers, and 'weeds' carefully chosen and harmoniously assembled (photo below).

Nearby the good sisters is a solitary lady of about their age, her long hair coiled in a chignon. She is seated, immobile, behind a card table on which her offerings are modestly arranged. Modestly--but with the eye of an artist. Today as always, she has a basket of eggs--chicken eggs of different colors and a clutch of tiny speckled quail eggs beside the main basket. The handle of her basket is decorated with a bouquet of feathers from her poultry yard--the iridescent green plumes of a cockerel's tail, the black-polka-dotted-white feathers of a guinea hen, and a rainbow of hen's feathers.

Fanned out beside the basket are some bouquets of wild herbes de Garrigue: farigoule (the pink-flowering wild thyme of Haute Provence), rosemary, savory, and bay leaves. And with their feet in a glass of water, three bunches of thin, wiry, wild asparagus. Her table holds a perfect still life of Haute Provence in spring. The lady herself has the character of a Rembrandt. I buy an herb bouquet and a bunch of asparagus, which I begin to munch immediately, savoring their pungent flavor, as we drift onward through the colors of the market.

I look around me, and then I unfocus my eyes. The market stands blur into a fluid sensory tapestry of form, texture, color, aromas, flavors, and sounds that engulf me, stimulating every sense I possess and flooding me with a pervasive delight and well-being. This, I think, is why I love markets so: they are sensual. And their beauty is created by life artists as naturally and effortlessly as the solitary egg and herb lady frames her weekly still life, or as the vendor who has written the price of his dried tomatoes on a smooth river stone casually tossed in their midst.

 

We find ourselves among the fresh fish vendors. Even though I can't buy anything from them, I eye their offerings with avid interest. In about a year, when the work on our house in Revest-des-Brousses is complete, here is where I will come to buy my fresh fish. A young man is sawing thick steaks off a whole fresh Mediterranean tuna, which bleeds like a side of beef. In his stand, I see several fish that I don't recognize--a good sign. Once the house is ready, I'm hoping to be able to buy small rockfish and other lesser known species to make real Provençal fish dishes such as bouillabaisse and bourride.

Big, deep purple, spiny sea urchins are also for sale, with a couple split open to show how full they are. Sea urchins are a delicacy. You cut off the bottoms of their shells, scoop out the delicate orange coral, and eat it raw, directly from the shell. Sea urchin coral has a delicious taste that is at once sweet and briny. I eye the urchins and my stomach growls. By now it is noon. Without my saying a word, Denis knows what I'm thinking. We ask the vendor if he could open a couple for us right there, and go off to beg a couple of plastic spoons from the olive oil lady we just bought from.

 

 

 

And that's all we need to déguster this most appetizing of appetizers. Momentarily satisfied, and with the urchins' briny flavor still lingering on our tongues, we head off to the one of our favorite stands we haven't yet visited--the calisson stand. The calisson is the traditional sweetmeat of Aix--a diamond-shaped confection made of slightly bitter almond paste and finely chopped candied melon and orange, on a base of rice paper and glazed with royal icing. It is neither cookie nor candy, but it is addictive. The very best calissons we've ever tasted are sold at the stand of Calissoun, a local calisson artisan. He offers not only the classic calisson, but also two delicious variations which show his genius for combining flavors--fig and my favorite, lavender.

His wares are beautifully displayed, with bouquets of dried lavender decorating the scene. The boxes of calissons are prettily tied with raffia, and before he hands us ours, he carefully inserts a miniscule bouquet of wheat and lavender into the raffia bow. We add our boxes of calissons to our already mortally heavy basket and bid him farewell until next time. We've had our appetizer, we have our dessert; now all that's missing is lunch! Which is what we go off to find...

Share