Oct 30 – Nov 1, 2008 – Arles, France – La Camargue and Cathedral D’Images

On a day trip to the Camargue region, south of Arles (follow this link for a Google map of the area) we saw this kite surfer making the most of a very windy day on the Mediterranean.

 

Horseback riding was apparently a popular pastime on the Camargue.  There were 10s of concessions like this one.

We assumed these were the bulls that participated in the bull ‘games’ in the Arles amphitheater.

Believe it or not, there were many rice fields in this area.  We also hoped to see some flamingoes (we saw a few west of this point) that use this area as a stop on their migration but were skunked.

On our way back to Arles from La Camargue, we passed through the area surrounding Les Baux-de-Provence.  Les Baux is regarded as a special village in France because of its dramatic setting, perched on a ridge of rock.

Almost at the place where the picture above was taken we found Cathedral D’Images an exhibit of van Gogh’s work that used an abandoned limestone quarry as the exhibition hall.  The photo below shows the opening to the exhibit.  Notice how square the lines are – this was very characteristic of the whole site and others in the surrounding area.  It was easy to visualize big chunks of limestone having been quarried here and transported for installation.

The exhibition consisted of a changing collage of van Gogh paintings displayed on the large flat surfaces of the quarry.  They used powerful projectors and set the display to classical music – deBussy, Mozart, others – some of which we even recognized.    The site, the art, and the music combined in a moving display that we all enjoyed.

 

From here we headed up to St Remy-de-Provence, another Provencal town that we enjoyed a stroll and located a restaurant that had been recommended (it wasn’t yet open because it was only 5:00 pm) before we headed back to Arles.

Oct 30 – Nov 1, 2009 – Arles, France – Other scenes

It seems as though every place we go our window shopping turns up something unique.  In Paris, it was the candle shop that LL found.  In Arles, these pottery pheasants or quails caught my eye.

This little apparatus controls access to certain streets.  Sometimes they are set to recognize a car at which point the large pipe in the middle of the road withdraws into a sleeve below the road, allowing cars to pass.  There are probably other, more sophisticated, ways these devices can be programmed.  We had a couple of run-ins with them – we’d get to a street our GPS said to turn down and it would be protected by one of these – but they usually let us through.

The Rhone River passes right through Arles.  This boat was registered in London but appeared to be some kind of cruise ship that took tourists on cruises (in style, I might add) up and down the Rhone.

Arles, and other European cities have many examples of plants growing on the sides of buildings.  We wondered how we could encourage a display like this on a side of our house.

We stayed in a bed and breakfast in Arles that was also a cooking school.  LL is holding open the door so you can see where it was.  The GPS in a car brought us to the right address and then we knocked on the door – there was no sign outside that gave you comfort that you knocking on the door of the right place.

There were 4 floors to this B&B / residence and about 5 or 6 rooms – each one unique.  Ours was a large loft-type space with a double bed on the ‘main’ floor and then two single beds in a loft accessible by a spiral staircase.  The kids slept in the loft and thought it was quite neat to be in a separate space from us.

One of the attractions of a bed and breakfast is the small number of other guests and the shared time spent over breakfast.  It gave us an opportunity to meet some of the other guests which included a couple from Singapore who were touring France but, more significantly, it gave us an opportunity to meet Fred and Jackie Fox.

Fred and Jackie were from southern California and were staying at the bed and breakfast and attending the cooking school run by the owner of the B&B, Erick Vedel.  The curriculum of the 5 day cooking school included visits to local artisan farmers (goat cheese producer) and bakers to experience the way they approached their craft.  Erick was assisted by a woman named Theresa who happened to be a French teacher in a private school in North Carolina who was living and working in Arles for a 6 month period.   Fred and Jackie were very interesting people, quite passionate about cooking, and thought our trip was a great idea.

We got to know Fred, Jackie, and Theresa quite well and they invited us to join them for dessert at their evening meal (that they had spent the day preparing as part of the cooking school.  This was sweet in more ways than one.

Although not as big an event in Europe, Erick Vedel had two boys of the right age who were interested in celebrating Halloween.  It made Allister and Charlotte feel right at home but a little homesick for some of traditions at home.

Oct 30 – Nov 1, 2009 – Arles, France – Les Arénes (Roman Amphitheater)

The Arles amphitheater is still in use today for things like bull ‘games’ (they don’t like bull fights in France) that use bulls raised in the nearby Camargue area a large marsh area that is used primarily for agriculture and also includes a regional park.

This pictures gives an idea of its size and the difference a restoration project underway will make to its appearance.

The next two photos show a sign that describes the restoration project and its cost – 8,970,000 Euros.  I don’t know if this is a lot or a little but after traveling around France for a bit it made you wonder what financial resources are required to maintain these various parts of their national heritage – and the conclusion was that it isn’t cheap.

A picture of the amphitheater, outfitted for its bull games.

 

Some of the structured viewed from underneath.   It made you realize that designers of modern athletic venues haven’t invented anything new – large aisles to move spectators around the underside of the seating and narrower passages to get them to their seats once they’re reached their section.  The Romans were doing this before 500 AD.

A look from what in modern times might be the ‘press box’ or official’s box of a modern athletic facility.

The previous photo was taken form the top of the highest point in this picture.

To get there, we had to climb these steps.  LL liked these images – we guessed ours weren’t the first footsteps these stairs had supported. 

 

Arles also had a theatre that dated to Roman times (‘friends, Romans, countryman, lend me your ear…’) but it was in nowhere near as good condition as its amphitheater.

Oct 30 – Nov 1, 2009 – Arles, France – Arles Museum

The next stop on our Roman antiquities trail was Arles and our first stop there was at the Arles Museum.

A (small) part of the collection of burial sarcophagus.

Allister next to the collection of large jugs.  Our running joke was that these were important to hold the mead. 

The archeological excavations documented in the museum described a circus maximus of significant size, as this model illustrates.

 

As an aside, the story behind the establishment of Arles was interesting.   As soldiers of the Roman army reached retirement, they were eligible to leave active service with a pension, similar to Canadian armed forces personnel.  The idea of having a number of recently trained soldiers with maybe not enough to do right near Rome was enough to scare some of the Roman elites into establishing a city a safe distance away that could house these ‘pensioners’.

This is a model of the amphitheater in Roman times.  We were starting to learn these were typical features of a Roman city. The next post shows what remains today of this amphitheater (answer: quite a bit and its still in use).

As our next stop, at the Pont du Gard near Avignon showed us, Romans were very advanced in their provision of water to their cities.  This shows some of the pipes they used to distribute water within their cities.  This was pre-300 AD, in case you were wondering.

There was a large collection of mosaics in the Arles Museum which impressed us at the time.  However, they paled once we saw the mosaics in Venice.  But that’s a story for another post.