WELCOME TO AIXPATRIA!
Welcome to the ‘homeland’ of many of us expats, temporary residents or business visitors frequently staying here regularly and of the locals who have lived here their whole life.
Like us, who are so lucky to live in or close to ‘Métropole Aix-en-Provence | Marseille’.
Today we, the creators of this site, are here as expats. Before that we were frequent visitors, both for business and for pleasure which is so easy to combine here. We considered ourselves not to be ‘tourists’, but ‘temporary residents’ each time we were here. Our first ‘home’ was Hotel Pigonnet. We now live just south of Aix-en-Provence. Very conveniently between Aix-en-Provence, Marseille and the airport. And who will know: maybe we will stay here and one day also become locals ourselves! As so many others did before us.
For all those other expats, visitors and locals we have set up this website and its related social media channels . In this website we will collect all the good experiences we have had and are having while visiting or living here in the past 10 years. For expats (which for us includes French people coming from other areas in France) it is not so hard to find great restaurants or hotels on Internet. And there are enough guides around. But finding the real nice places is harder and word-by-mouth still works best. Consider us to be one of your word-by-mouth channels!
This is not a formal guide!
Although you can use it as such, it is not really a guide or directory. For that I advise you to go to Google or Tripadvisor or one of the many websites about the Provence.
This is a random collection of places and companies we really like. It also absolutely is not intended to be objective. Everything written in the posts and pages reflect our own opinions and taste and our personal experiences. But if you also visit and appreciate the places we have described, the chance is big you will also like the other stuff in this website.
Especially for the expats we will also share our experiences with gardeners, pool services, Internet providers etc. We has some pretty bad experiences in getting stuff done, but also met some very good handymen. We will share this with you as well.
We would also very much like to encourage you to leave comments and send us tips about places or companies you really liked yourself. They could well end up in one of the many categories. Also if you have ideas for new categories which you now miss, like ‘best places to kitesurf’ (we have no clue) or where to get the best Dutch food (nowhere near here as far as we know), please let us know.
We hope you enjoy this website and do not forget to connect to us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!
Nicolaas & Immy & Minne 2020