Jas de Bouffan

The next morning I set my clock. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, 6.50am! I did feel a bit sick and woozy, as often do if I attempt to surface before seven in the morning, but it was all to be worth it. We were going to Jas de Bouffan, to see the maison where Paul Cezanne lived and worked, woohooo!

We had to get the 8.30 bus, so Alex insisted that we leave at 8.15 to get there, as the bus stop was a whole 200m away from the campsite;)!

Something nice about the buses in Aix is they have the radio on. Cool eh? Although at the moment there are only about three English songs that the French play on the radio,

1, Adele - 'Someone like you'
2. Adele - 'Rolling in the deep'
3. Sounds like James Blunt - 'You will never know'(?)(maybe I will never know)
Oh, and, I said 'about' 3
4. Cobra Starship - 'You make me feel' (I do like this one)
And, just remembered another one
5. Rihanna - 'We found love'

But that is it, honestly! My finger is positively numb from trying to find English music on the motorway in the camper van. Talk back radio just doesn't have the same appeal.

Anyway, I digress. We had to get two buses to Jas de Bouffan.

We get to town, and realise that there is a big bus strike on, and all the buses are doing different routes, doing half a route, running from different stops, to different stops, or not running at all! It was chaos - I think they will their pay rise.

Also, and we don't know if this was part of it or not, on every junction, there were about 9 white vans parked up, in the middle of the junction, so that nobody could get through. This seemed to be some kind of protest, the police were standing around doing nothing, and the traffic (and buses, if there were any) were in gridlock.





But, I really wanted to go to the house!!!

We spoke some 'Franglais' with some ladies at the bus stop, as you do when there is an exciting drama of this sort (there were a LOT of people at the bus stop) and told them at we had to be at the Jas de Bouffan by 10am. 'Non', they all said in stereo, 'you will not get there by 10am, too far!', shaking their heads and frowning in unison.

We got talking to a lady waiting for the número six with us (who spoke absolutely no English whatsoever) and she somehow told us to start following her, so we followed her.

I said to Alex, 'don't lose track of that lady', and she marched off quickly down the road, 'she is our only hope!'.

After a lot of marching and occasional stops for conversations with the Gendarmerie (her, not us, we stood around like lemons, awaiting our next instructions), we finally got to a bus stop. She said, 'go, don't wait for me, I am too weak and my legs will not make the journey....save yourselves' (or something like that). We said 'merci beaucoup' and walked around the corner, and there it was!

It was 9.50am and we had made it!!




Well, the rest of this story is exciting too, but I have to admit it that getting there had more thrills and spills than we expected.

The tour was lovely. Apart from the fact that the house is being renovated, so we couldn't go around it. Believe me, from the look of the two rooms we went into, it was a renovators dream, if you know what I mean. I would have loved to see inside the whole house though, even in a mess and with no furniture. It was beautiful. But, the tour was about Cezanne and his work, not the house, as the tour guide reminded us.

So, here is the story. Paul Cezanne's father was a felt hat maker turned banker. When one of his debtors couldn't pay up, he repossessed 'Jas de Bouffan' and used it as the Cezanne family country estate (it is actually very close to town - walkable, as we had discovered) as they already had their town house on Cours Mirabeau (where the market and the nice bearded magician were yesterday).

The house is huge, so Paul's father gave Paul the 'Grand Salon' to use for himself, and to have friend's over and hang out. It was here, at the age of 20, that Paul started to paint. Literally, here. He covered the walls!!











Unfortunately, the walls are now bare. One year after Cezanne's death, the new owner of the house sold the paintings. They had to take the plaster off the walls and gently, scrape all of the wall away until the were left with the layers of paint which they stretched over canvas. Amazing eh?

It was wonderul to see the house and the gardens Cezanne used as inspiration for so much of his work. He spent a lot of time here and came back to his mother's and father's home often over the 40 years in which he painted. He also used the local peasants as models for the famous 'Card Players'.

















Just gorgeous!

Love
Est xxx