Olivia's Aix-cellent Adventure: You win, Mont Sainte Victoire

Well we decided to climb a mountain.

Mont Sainte Victoire in particular. For those of you who don't know, Sainte Victoire is an 18 kilometer limestone mountain ridge in the south of France. It is about a 20-25 minute drive from Aix and is beautiful. You can also find the mountain in many of Cezanne's paintings because he had a little studio up in the mountain there!

Our adventure began at 10:00 in the morning where we all met at the rotonde to get on the bus. Problem #1: There is more than one bus stop at the rotonde and none of us really knew which was the right one. Well we waited for a while and the bus was supposed to come at 10:15. We saw it at 10:15 as it sailed by the empty bus stop across from us. Shucks!

We all decided to just go warm up a bit and then meet back at the proper bus stop at 11:15 for the next bus. When we got back at 11 we had all changed our outfits and put on more layers because we were all colder than we thought. 11:15 went by and still no bus. Someone checked the schedule aaaaaaand the bus on Sunday doesn't come until 12:30. Oops. Back to the apartment again!! We actually made a much-needed detour to the pastry shop near my apartment. I got a frambolotine or something like that. It is essentially a pasty with raspberry jelly on top of chocolate mousse on top of chocolate brownie. Wonderful. I couldn't eat it all because it was so rich, but that just means I'll have more for later :)

Alright so we finally made it on the bus at 12:30 and the real adventure began! The bus driver drove like a maniac. He was driving so fast on all of these twisty roads and sharp curves that went to the countryside. It was frightening to say the least. I think we were all really happy to actually make it to the mountain!

We started up the mountain (after Allie bought the 5 euro map!! Insane). I was in the lead at first and I was keeping us at a pretty good pace. We stopped pretty early on to shed 2 or 3 layers because it was so hot. Well it was probably warm and we were climbing, but still. We kept going for a while and thought we were following the right trail. We were following the right trail at least as far as the guy at the visitor center told us. We actually took a wrong turn after a while and had to double back. Then we got on the "right" path and headed straight up. The goal was to get to this big cross on the very top of the mountain. Well after a while the path got super narrow and full of these dumb pokey thorny bushes. Then it was time to scale the rocks. I felt like spiderman haha! But I made it up there without falling or slipping actually. It was pretty scary. Then the real problem began. While we were experiencing amazing views and mountains and a beautiful sky with no clouds at all, we soon discovered that we were on a big ledge with no more path! Allie found a tiny little pathway and the ever so helpful arrow was on the rock in front of her pointing up. Apparently we had been climbing on the rock climber pathway and had reached the point where we were expected to get out our gear and go straight up. Oh boy.

We decided to eat lunch and then head back down. The down part was a little scary. Lots of slipping and sliding. Then we headed in the opposite direction, still trying to get to the top. The trails were long and we were hiking so fast! I slipped a few times but only got some minor scrapes. Then once we got to this trail that started going up pretty steeply, I bit the dust! I fell straight onto my ankle and then put my hand down to catch myself. It hurt. I have this lovely gash and big bruise on my ankle to show for it. But, despite that I kept going. Probably a mistake because it hurt but I was determined to make it to the top. My determination didn't last very long and then we made it to this sign that said that the top was another 1.5 hours. The bus came before that so we had to turn back. Then I fell again and hit my back on this huge rock. Another ouch :(

We were going at a really fast pace to get to the bottom of the mountain because we wanted to make the 5:25 bus. We made it back down (without any more major wipeouts from me!!!) at 5:20. Then we waited for the bus. There were others waiting too so we knew we hadn't missed it. Then 5:45 came and we knew we had a problem. Long story short, the visitor center guy informed us that the bus driver just forgot to do his route at the time. WHAT? Only in France... So our options were to either ride in the car with the visitor center guy to this little town and then take a bus to Aix or wait an hour for the next bus. Allie, Jessica, and Marley went with the guy. Then we got a phone call 20 minutes later. After he dropped them off they found out that the little town had no more buses left for Aix so they had to call a cab. We waited for the 6:30 bus.

The bus finally came at 6:35, which might have been the time it was supposed to, not sure. We saw it and got really excited because we were all freezing and it was pitch black. We jumped up and down and waved in excitement an the bus headed towards us. It was going really fast. Then we realized it wasn't planning on slowing down. We had to jump out of the way or get hit! Thank goodness we all made it out of the way in time. I think Leigh scraped her leg though... Anyways we got on the bus and had another tumultuous ride back.

In the end I'd say this one goes to the mountain. Maybe next time if we get an earlier start and a better read of the map we can win the next one!

Here are some pictures from the day:

Mont Sainte Victoire