By aixcentric The Hotel de Ville will be the starting place for a march remembering those who lost their lives in Paris this week; it will take place tomorrow, Sunday 11th, at 15:00. Please be aware that I have been told this verbally today by the staff; I have nothing in …

By aixcentric Happy New Year to all! And it’s good to start 2015 on a positive note: it looks like there is some movement, at last, to restore the bastide that was home to the Cezanne family for 4 decades. Paul Cezanne’s father built the artist a studio on the …

Today, we see the launch of a new direct train service between Marseille and Milan by thello. It takes just over seven hours, and the train calls in at all major stations on the Cote D’Azur, then Italian centres like Ventimiglia, San Remo, Genoa and Milan. Costs between 30-70€ each …

By aixcentric Booking has opened today for this new service which will be the first time the Eurostar, in its 20+years existence, has gone as far as the Med. It starts 1st May and services will be twice a week, increasing to five times a week during the summer. It …

By aixcentric If tomorrow marks the start of the new you – health, fitness and all the usual resolutions – you may want to have a look at Actiform at Les Milles. I’m posting this for two reasons: firstly la Belle-fille Aixcentric thinks it’s wonderful – she does aquabiking and …

By aixcentric There seems to be quite a churn in restaurants in Aix – especially along rue d’Italie, my route into town. But I was very sad to hear about the impending closure of The Provence Shop in rue Victor Leydet. We had lunch there today and it was very …

By aixcentric If you are in Marseille for the Christmas lights and market, you may like to drop into the new exhibition at the Maison de l’Artisanat which is showing three centuries of seasonal objects from St Petersbourg. Fine china and costumes are arranged in tableaux taking the visitor back …

By aixcentric Today is the feast day of Saint Barbara – Sainte-Barbe – and in Provence, the day for planting blé d’ésperance ready for the Christmas table. If you are new to Aix, these are the corn-seeds currently being sold from makeshift stalls – and grocery shops – usually for …

By aixcentric Saturday sees the opening of the new expo at the Musée Granet: Aix Antique will whisk us back to Roman times to give us a taste of what the town must have been like in its heyday. There will be artefacts aplenty as digging out foundations for new …

By aixcentric photo from The Guardian Last year we were wrong-footed by air-traffic controllers three times: one flight cancelled, one delayed and one afternoon sitting on the tarmac at Heathrow for hours. ‘Where can we find out about this sort of thing before it happens?’ we wondered. Well now there’s …