Once again, I am blown away by how old everything is here. It's fantastic.

I have to toot my own horn here, since I am far too lazy to e-mail or call the appropriate people to tell them this. I am a finalist for the Vanderbilt Prize for Undergraduate Research in Physics and Astronomy. I believe the winner knows who they are already after having read the e-mail again. Anyway, I get $500 and a free trip to Nashville if the award ceremony is held on a day that I am available. A nice big thank you goes out to the Harmons for getting me to apply for that award, too.

Back to France:
On my way to class I pass by some bushes. Amusingly, bunches of snails slime out from under the foliage and they and their slime are all over the sidewalk. The last few days have brought out some of the snails, but some cruel people step on them. If they were slugs, I'd understand. But the snails?! Instead of tiptoeing through a maze of snails, I am forced to walk through their remains. At least no one threw salt on them.

Not too much has been going on here. Class consumes the mornings, and I tend to walk around Aix spending money in the afternoon. There is a lot to see in Aix so I have done some more tourist-type adventures.

Roman baths:
Here is one view of what were the thermal baths.









Here is another view of the thermal baths. The fun part about the Thermes Sextius is that there is a modern-day spa on top of it. The Roman ruins were found during renovation, I believe. The same goes for the Cathédrale Saint-Sauveur d'Aix, which is the one across the street from my school (see below for my tour of the cloisters).

In the thermies, you can drink the water out of this fountain. Naturally, I drank it. It wasn't warm, which I found disappointing. I suppose it comes from a different source. I really have no idea.








On to the cathedral! This is it from the outside. Because the streets are so narrow I can't get a complete image.





Behold! Cloisters! I waited around the cathedral for a long time before the tour of these began because they couldn't find the keys. Anyway, all of the columns are different and at the tops of the columns are images from the Bible. It's pretty interesting to stand in places like the cloisters and the thermal baths and realize that these things have been around for so long. The craftsmanship is impressive.

Again, here are the cloisters with parts of the cathedral in the background. If you know anything about periods of architecture, you will note that this cathedral is truly a hodge-podge of styles. There are the Roman forum remains in the Baptistery that were discovered when renovations were being performed. The cathedral itself was started in the fifth century and additions have been made ever since. There is Gothic, baroque, Romanesque, etc. architecture throughout the whole place. It is quite fantastic to behold.