Fête Champêtre

Champêtre means 'Garden Party' I believe, in an 18th century French sort of way.

a 30 minute drive from Marseille near Aix-En-Provence, this property is for sale as the owners now live in London.

I arrived early, around noon when the party was just starting. There was reggae and heat.  I had slept only a few hours the night before as our friend Missy has been in town visiting.. and oh yeah, there was the Fête de la Musique thing in Berlin at Else.  That's right.  Spent most of the afternoon wandering the property, drinking fruit punch, trying to sleep and attempting broken Canadian French.

After the party there was a pretty crazy taxi ride through Aix.  Algeria had just won against... somebody in the World Cup.  There are plenty of Algerians in Aix and Marseille so the streets were packed with people setting off fire works, doing wheelies on motorcycles and stuff..

Reminded me of just the night before in Berlin where we were picked up by a taxi driver from Ghana who could barely contain his excitement about that night's tie game with Germany.  One of Brena's all time favourite moments in Berlin, he was blasting some dope Malian riddims in the car and singing along the whole ride home.  Quite the opposite of the less-then-impressed disposition of Germans after the game.. or just generally. 

Not a surprise, I was woken early by a phone call from the front desk telling me that I forgot to eat breakfast.  It was nice though, they brought it to the room and then later I met up with some of the other dudes from the party for a very French lunch before heading back.