As the weather is gradually getting warmer (key word: gradually) the bourgeons aren't the only things that have started to come out: so have the tourists! They cluster around the St. Sauveur Cathedral and trundle down the street with their cameras and their backpacks and ball caps, chattering loudly in English or Chinese or even French. Some days, as I try to squeeze past them and their large umbrellas on the way to school, they become for me less benign and entirely embêtant, as my host mother likes to call them. In other words, fully and utterly annoying.
The tourists are abundant in Aix, but they've got nothing on the tourists in Venice and Paris. At the beginning of April, the professors at Marchutz and all of the art students traveled to Venice for a painting excursion. We stayed there for nine days, painting like crazy every day. I ended up churning out thirty paintings, which were quite cumbersome to take back on the train. However the hardest thing about the trip was getting accustomed to the constant surveillance of passing sightseers. Plein-air painting is quite enjoyable, without all of the people who stop by to watch you while you paint. Most days I would go out of my way to find a nice quiet place to set up my easel, somewhere out of the sun and away from the throngs of vacationers. Other days I wasn't so adept at selecting a spot. One time I set up in the corner between two buildings, thinking that the inability to see my canvas would deter even the boldest of onlookers, but nonetheless, some people poked their heads around my easel to satisfy their curiosity with an "ooh!" and an "ah!" and sometimes a "bella!"
I was happy to return to Aix after Venice, but just one day later I left on the TGV for Paris, where there are the most tourists per year of any city on this planet. I had no idea what I was getting myself into! The very first day (at the Eiffel Tower of course) we waited in line for over an hour to ride in a sardine-packed elevator up to the top of the famous monument. There were so many people crowded together and shoving against each other that I hardly felt the cold wind blowing through the open steel structure, which was probably a good thing. At the time though, all I could think of was how claustrophobic I was. The next day (at this tiny little obscure museum called the Louvre) we waited in line for an hour and a half just to go through security and get into the museum. Sometimes it was so crowded in the galleries that you could hardly see the paintings underneath the layers and layers of people. And in case all the hundreds of digital pictures weren't enough, on every street corner there were rows of souvenir shops selling proof of their voyage to Paris---berets, snow globes, postcards, and t-shirts bedazzled with PARIS! (...a perfect souvenir from the fashion capital of the world, n'est-ce pas?)
I was relieved to escape the infestation of foreigners crawling around Paris and the neighboring château at Versailles. I will gladly take the embêtant tourists in Aix (who are seeming increasingly warmhearted) over the tourists in Venice and Paris, any day of the week!
les touristes: the tourists
bourgeon: bud
embêtant: annoying
bella: "pretty" in Italian
Below: a view of my easel and the Adriatic Sea in Venice; documentation of the long line at the Louvre in Paris
The tourists are abundant in Aix, but they've got nothing on the tourists in Venice and Paris. At the beginning of April, the professors at Marchutz and all of the art students traveled to Venice for a painting excursion. We stayed there for nine days, painting like crazy every day. I ended up churning out thirty paintings, which were quite cumbersome to take back on the train. However the hardest thing about the trip was getting accustomed to the constant surveillance of passing sightseers. Plein-air painting is quite enjoyable, without all of the people who stop by to watch you while you paint. Most days I would go out of my way to find a nice quiet place to set up my easel, somewhere out of the sun and away from the throngs of vacationers. Other days I wasn't so adept at selecting a spot. One time I set up in the corner between two buildings, thinking that the inability to see my canvas would deter even the boldest of onlookers, but nonetheless, some people poked their heads around my easel to satisfy their curiosity with an "ooh!" and an "ah!" and sometimes a "bella!"
I was happy to return to Aix after Venice, but just one day later I left on the TGV for Paris, where there are the most tourists per year of any city on this planet. I had no idea what I was getting myself into! The very first day (at the Eiffel Tower of course) we waited in line for over an hour to ride in a sardine-packed elevator up to the top of the famous monument. There were so many people crowded together and shoving against each other that I hardly felt the cold wind blowing through the open steel structure, which was probably a good thing. At the time though, all I could think of was how claustrophobic I was. The next day (at this tiny little obscure museum called the Louvre) we waited in line for an hour and a half just to go through security and get into the museum. Sometimes it was so crowded in the galleries that you could hardly see the paintings underneath the layers and layers of people. And in case all the hundreds of digital pictures weren't enough, on every street corner there were rows of souvenir shops selling proof of their voyage to Paris---berets, snow globes, postcards, and t-shirts bedazzled with PARIS! (...a perfect souvenir from the fashion capital of the world, n'est-ce pas?)
I was relieved to escape the infestation of foreigners crawling around Paris and the neighboring château at Versailles. I will gladly take the embêtant tourists in Aix (who are seeming increasingly warmhearted) over the tourists in Venice and Paris, any day of the week!
les touristes: the tourists
bourgeon: bud
embêtant: annoying
bella: "pretty" in Italian
Below: a view of my easel and the Adriatic Sea in Venice; documentation of the long line at the Louvre in Paris