Mont Sainte-Victoire

Our last Friday of the trip, we headed outside Aix to the Montagne Sainte-Victoire to do a little hiking and watercoloring. The trail was a little harder than imagined, and hikers are told to stay on the trails, since it's easy to get lost, even for the more experienced.
Mary Beth Bird writes about Mont Sainte Victoire:

“Friday morning, we all met together as usual in front of the chapel in school. After taking the bus to town and eating some nutritious energy food (like nutella crepes), we took a bus to the mountain. The bus ride itself was quite a challenge due to the numerous amounts of extremely curvy roads. Alive and a little queasy, we arrived at "la maison st. victoire", a little guide building that had maps, information about the mountain, and a small restaurant. The guide told us to take the black path that would eventually lead to the brown path for a medium difficulty climb of the mountain but with ambiguous signs, we ended up on the yellow path, which meant climbing. So after attempting to find different easier paths, we gave in to our growling stomachs and sat down and ate our homemade lunches, most of which consisted of french bread and ham, although there was one PB & J. We sat and ate and were told to appreciate the silence of being on the mountain, which really was incredible. We descended the mountain and attempted to use watercolors to paint the mountain. I am no Cezanne, but some of the other students’ paintings were close. We then went back to "la maison" and watched a surprisingly high-tech video on the history of Mt. St. Victoire. After the video, we had a lot of time to spare so the kids decided to try another path of the mountain. We scrambled through prickly bushes and climbed over rocks, but got pretty high and a great view of the land. Although it was clear that the kids had made the wrong decision for we returned sweaty and covered with dozens of tiny yet extremely painful scratches, while the teachers enjoyed some cold frozen yogurt.”

For a collection of photos from Mont Ste-Victoire and our visit to the beach and callanques of Cassis, check out our site: http://westminsterinfrance.shutterfly.com