Day 45-In college again!?

"Enjoy the rest of your travel as if each day were the first day you arrived in Europe."

This is a line from an email I received from a new Mexican friend I met in Firenze, and I think it's excellent advice. At this point in the trip, it's difficult not to feel worn down a bit, but we are trying to experience everything with the freshest faces possible.

Today I went on a day-trip with the SCAD kids, just like I'm in school again! We boarded the buses at 9am, and waved goodbye to Hannah, who decided to spend the day in solitude in the soon-to-be deserted village. The entire town area has 300 people, but the central village only has about 100, 70 of which are SCAD students and professors.
I spent the bus ride and day with Hannah's former roommate, Meghan, her current roommate Jennifer, and their friend, Nathan, all of whom are architecture students. We went exploring the town of Aix en Provence, which was home to Paul Cezanne and Emile Zola, among others. (Not a bad claim to fame for a small-mid sized town.) The town is filled with fountains, all quite interesting, including spitting fish, spitting men, and other waterworks, large and small, sprinkled throughout the town. We explored a cathedral with a 5th/6th century Baptistry and exterior architectural styles ranging from Roman to Gothic. I also saw an ancient Roman bath, the most of which is used today as a high-end spa.
There is an old mideval part of the town and a more grid-like Baroque part, and we preferred to wander and lose ourselves in the disorganized yet interesting angles and architecture of the old part. This town is built to human scale, and most buildings are beige/tan, so it's a cozy place to be. The weather was the only downside of the day, a little overcast and drizzly, but beyond that, it was great. We wandered the marketplace, bought amazing sugar/coconut cookies in a sweets shop, and tried a liquer that tasted like lavendar soap.
At 3:30, I met back up with the group, and parted ways with the others, who opted to spend the night in Aix, exploring its cafe culture. The buses then carted us to painter Paul Cezanne's last studio, where we were able to tour 15 at a time and see it exactly as it was at his death. We saw the objects (baskets, tins, ceramics, bottles) he used for his still lifes (which they had in reproduction), his easel, some destroyed canvases that he had disgarded in the garden area, and most interesting, a tall, slender hole cut in the wall where he could remove his large scale paintings from the second story home to the hillside garden area on the other side.
After seeing the studio, we boarded the buses again and headed back to Lacoste. I met a ton of great SCAD students, including Matt, Devin, Diana, Dana, Robin, and more whose names escape me now. We had lively conversation about our travels, then napped to shared iPod music.
Back in Lacoste, a director let Hannah and I eat dinner there since hardly half of the students had come back with the bus. In exchange, I informed them of the way in which we'd arrived by train and bus which cost us only a Eurail day and 3,70 EUR. The students had previously been advised to take a taxi from a nearby town for about 100 EUR if they didn't arrive with SCAD flight times. Yikes. He seemed excited and grateful to get the information, which I think helped in his decision to allow us to eat free of charge. Libre? Merci!
We'll definitely miss the comforts of a SCAD environment, but tomorrow at the crack of dawn we begin our trek to Madrid. The updates won't be as frequent afterwards, but you'll just have to wait in suspense!