The man lugged his piano, settled down by the sidewalk, and started to play a jazzed-up rendition of Pulp Fiction’s soundtrack. His notes came out like a Spanish guitar. Lightbulbs flashed in his face, he was videotaped by a fat old woman who had no business wearing her short-shorts, and people crowded around him, requesting “Mr Butter Fingers” to play this-and-that.
Fountains, Fountains
You’ll never get lost here. The heart of this city is a fucking big fountain. And everything spreads outside in circles after that. All the roads lead to one circle or another.
Actually, Aix is known as the City of A Thousand Fountains, or some title indicating that there are actually a lot of fountains. Like this next picture, which is my favourite fountain of all, because it’s in the middle of a supposedly-abandoned square, and usually there are lots of students or buskers with guitars, or artists who sketch your portrait. Although I lucked out in finding the square empty for a picture.
Errrr… Also, I like the walls around Aix. (How stupid I am with words today)
There are a total of 3 cinemas here in Aix. One is the commercial one, the other is along Cours Mirabeau meaning hoity-toity, and the third is Cinema Mazarin, which is tucked discreetly between side streets. They feature un-Hollywood/independent films in their original versions, and they have monthly theme screenings — Italian movie month, lesbian-and-gay film fests, stuff like that.
Of course, it’s a shit to watch films from Armenia and Japan since I can’t really follow, but in fairness, they put French subtitles, which is bearable. And they have nice drawings on their walls. Plus points.
Weekend On Some Hill
We spent the last two weekends on hills — this weekend we went up to Lyon, and the one before we tried to find a quiet place whose peace we could disrupt with our guitar playing.
So yeah.. we’re quite lucky that there are a lot of peaceful places around Aix, and we found one by driving without my horrendous map-reading skills.
The place we had found was straight out of the movie Blair Witch Project (first one. the second royally sucked ass). There were fallen branches everywhere and the remains of a burnt-down house.
Obviously, though, we didn’t care.
What I need now is a nice glass filled with alcoholic liquid. I’m in such a lousy mood to write. And I will blog the reason why I am uninspired…
