CityVox is your friend in France to find where to get out about town
Here’s a great site, available in 260 cities in France, when you’re looking for a great place to go eat, see a play, hear music, for you and your children. It’s called CityVox and their headquarters are in Marseille, believe it or not! They’re also present in 300 other cities throughout Europe.
It’s a smart blend of Web 1.0 and 2.0 approaches. It provides a list of all restaurants, hotels, theatres, clubs and other venues in your town, with useful information on the style and the location. There’s a special Children section with shows and some activities. It also allows members to post comments on all events and restaurants, so you get that web 2.0 flavour that makes it that much more useful.
It’s also available in other languages, although with quite erratic ‘localizations’, ie, be prepared for a steady mix of English and French in the English version. Also, since there are few comments in other languages, the site first pulls up those venues with comments in the language you’re surfing in but then shows comments in French.
So surfing in French is the way to get the best access to user insight because it pulls up first the venues with the most positive comments in French, therefore drawing from the largest sample, but then again, contributing to the other language sites will only make them more useful… Tough choice for the international parent in you!
– > Cityvox in English
–> Cityvox en Espanol
–> CityVox en Italiano
– > Cityvox en Deutsch
Sports Activities for kids during school holidays – Aix
With school holidays being every six weeks in France, it’s useful to know what activities are out there for children 3 and up. Three year old is often the cut off point, unfortunately, for camps.
As concerns sports activities, here are the places I’ve found where children can have a good time:
- Aix Country Club: Based just North of Aix in beautiful puyricard, the AIx Country Club, a sports club focused on tennis for adults, offers all day sports camps for children during all the French school holidays. They offer a hot lunch served in the restaurant as well. You can choose to sign up your child for a few days only, for hald fays, or all day, from 8:30 to 5 PM. Sports are a mix of various team sports and tennis.
- Set Club: Set in Eguilles, the Set Club offers camps similar to those of the Country Club. The Set Club itself offers more than just tennis for its adult members. There’s a spa, an exercize room, aerobics classes and squash.
- Horseback and poney riding: Aix is the place to ride – horses! There are many equestrian centers all around the city. After testing a few, I wrote a specific post about them, found here.
Two I know of North of the city are:
- Les Pinchinats: in les Platanes, 10 minutes from Aix. For a laid back, slightly unkept riding experience, but a lot of cautions is taken with the children, at least the beginners. For the more advanced, caution is still the rule but the teacher-owner has a taste for shouting and bad words… As we say : ‘ Au Pinchinats ça sent le caca – mais on aime ça!’. I’ll let you translate…
- Domaine de la Garde – Eguilles
I haven’t found a specific address for them. They’re not far from the Set Club, but on Route de Berre, on the left after the big Bovero store. Turn let onto a tree lined dirt road. Its at the end.
The Domaine de la Garde has just changed management in 2009, for the best. Its also planned to be completely renovated during the summer of 2009. The young woman who manages it now is great, cautious, attentionate. They’re not equipped yet with any leaflets and to reach them the best thing is to call Severine’s cell phone. Its a club good for all levels, with a true interest in teaching, unlike the one below, where horses are given more consideration than students…
- Les Ecuries de venelles: In a very different style, set more north of Les Pinchinats, between Venelles and St Cannat, are les Ecuries de Venelles. Once you’ve managed the terrible, pothole-filled dirt road that constitutes the last 1.5 kilometers to reach it, the setting is gorgeous. Its a wide open space with horses quietly eating or running in the grass fields. The stables are spotless. But the feel is not as warm as Les Pinchinats. Its more competitive in a way and more pricy than les Pinchinats.
- Municipal and Association sponsored activities: As in most cities in France, there are activities offered both directly by the City for children living there and by ‘ Maisons de la Jeunesse et de la Culture’, or MJC, associations that are sponsored by the city. They’re usually quite affordable for residents, but I cannot garantee you’ll find the level of attention to both you and your children you may have from good private institutions. The staff in charge of the children, from what little I’ve seen, often seem a bit young and not overly cautious about the language they use when the children are around. The activities run from sports activities to cultural and arts activities. Go to your local ‘ Mairie’ ( town hall) directly or to their site to find out more prior to the school holidays. — > The Aix City site is here, and here’s the site for an MJC right next to the Rotonde: the Prévert MJC.
Power Yoga in Aix en Provence
Aix en provence is blessed with a few opportunities to practice the active yoga sometimes called power Yoga, Ashtanga, or Vinyasa Yoga that I personally practiced while in California.
- Aix Yoga: Classes are on Monday and Thursday evenings at 8:15 and during the day on other days. They’re in a dance studio in Aix, rue Lieutaud, not far from the Rotonde parking garage. Elise the teacher also speaks great English.
- Aix Marseille Yoga: Classes are held during the day at 7, 12:30 and at 6 and 8 in the evening in Aix, near Cours Sextius, and in Marseille.