Vendredi en France

Today Arles and Saint-Rémy-de-Provence floated to the top, not so far away as yesterday, we could do both in an easy drive.

First up was Arles, another city that was founded in the Roman days and has the world heritage sites to prove it. The main stop was the Roman Arena in the center of town, for those fans of the movie Ronin this was the site of the gun battle in the arena where Robert De Niro’s character was injured. Known as the Arles Amphitheatre it has been around since about 90 AD and is currently still in use. Currently there are Bull Fights going on (the bull is only killed on Easter we were told) and when Sydney saw a man wetting down the central arena for dust control Kim and I (and another man) spent a few minutes telling her that they were rinsing the bull blood from the sand. Poor kid… After the arena we visited the Cloister at St. Trophime Church. The cloister has been around since the 12th century and is an important example of Romanesque architecture. Or so we were told, there was much remodeling going on so only part of the Cloister was visitable. Oh well, that is life on the road 🙂

Van Gough lived in Arles for awhile so we tried to see what we could on his inspiration, then tiring of the heat we bolted for Saint-Rémy…. Ahhh screw it, we had had enough of sightseeing and decided to head back to our quiet hill top town for a swim, enough already. Only our town was not so quiet anymore, the weekend has come and a holiday weekend to boot. Much busier and the hotel was fuller. Not enough to stop us from slowing down though…