Arles, matey!

Arles, finally is like France.  Nice and Monaco were more like some North American’s bizarre spaced out opium dream of France.  Granted, Monaco is not France but close enough - especially in a bizarre opium dream.

Arles:  main drag where all the hot action is.

 Arles is a small medieval city in Provence.  It has obviously been there a while since there are Roman ruins in the city and Big Julio of the Caesar crime family paid a visit.  The arena that is in Arles is actually in better shape albeit quite a bit smaller than the one in Rome.  It is still in use.  That worried me. There are a lot of Christian churches in Arles as there is in most places in Europe.   That means there are a lot of Christians. If I was a Christian and there was this functioning Roman arena just around the corner I might be a little nervous and I might avoid the subject of lions.

The Arena in Arles.  Christians can finally relax - the lions have left and all we are left with is Bull

After swaggering around Arles for a little while exclaiming loudly about drinking lots of wine to worship Bacchus and then heading off visit some Vestal Virgins I found out that they use the arena for bull-fighting now.  I was glad to hear that because I was getting some very, very nasty looks from the locals. 

In the bull fighting in Arles the bull gets to fight another day.  The matadors don’t gang up on and kill the bull with a thousand small sword wounds like they do in Spain.  In Arles they try to take the ribbons off the bull’s horns.  The worst-case for the bull is that he just doesn’t look as pretty when he leaves the arena.  The worst-case scenario for the bullfighter is that he leaves the area via ambulance clutching a hand-full of blood soaked ribbons.  Sounds fair to me.

The Roman Theatre in Arles.  It is still operating today - notice the modern lattice arrangement for lights.  Modern improvements - the Romans built a theatre that lasted 2000 years but THEY didn't have electric lights.  Nah nah nah NAH na-na!

Arles is not pronounced “Arrels” as we Anglophones would say it.  It is properly pronounced “AR–luh” with the emphasis on the “AR” part.  That would explain why when we tried to book a train ticket to Arles from Nice the ticket agent looked blankly at us and said, “Pardon?” “Arrells”, “Pardon” “ARRELLS!” “Ey am sorry, Missyew, but zere ees no plass een Fronce wiss zat nom”  “Yes there is!  Right here on this map in Province. And don’t call me Miss Yu!”  “Pardon?

On our walk from the train station in Arles we discovered an interesting thing about the French.  They LOVE their dogs.  What they don’t love is picking up after their dogs.  Everyone seems to have a dog and they take them everywhere with them – into the grocery stores, restaurants, museums and on the sidewalks.  Guess what you find everywhere on the sidewalks?  You find yourself doing a little dance down the sidewalks in France – step left, left again, right, left, jump, slow, slow, quick quick…  You begin to wonder what is going to happen to all that dog poop.  Is it gradually going to bury the city and they will build more city on top?  In the far future the archeologists will probably never be able to bring themselves to dig up the ruins of the French cities.

Our host in Arles, Danielle told us that the next day there was an outdoor market that stretched along the whole main street of Arles.  Everything would be available there from the usual junk to a local farmer’s market.  Telen’s eyes immediately glazed over and she developed a look on her face that one might see on a chocaholic at the doors of the Cadbury factory.  Danielle and I both backed slowly away and I spoke carefully and calmly to Telen, “The market us not until tomorrow, honey.  Put the shopping bag down, now.  No one needs to get hurt.  Everything is going to be OK…”

The outdoor market in Arles.  This is the spice vendor.

The market was amazing.  It seemed to go on forever and they had everything you could think of.  One side was the usual junk that might have gone missing from some shipping container somewhere to an incredible farmer’s market.   Not only was there vegetables but they also had hot foods, wines, olive oils, meats, honey and jams, roasting chickens and on and on.  Telen was in heaven – darting here and there.  Following her was like trying to grab a rainbow.  She did not even notice the heavy rain, wind and cold.

Although Arles is a beautiful little town we saw it at it’s worst.  The weather was grim.  It rained most of the time and it was cold and windy.  One of the locals told us that they have received more rain since January than they normally get all year.  Provence is known for its warm sunny weather - which is why Van Gogh came here.

Just singin' in the rain!

It was pretty interesting to walk the same streets that Van Gogh walked and did his painting on.   We stopped at the point on the Rhone where he painted his famous “Starry Night” and we even had lunch at his “Café de La Nuit”.  Granted the latter was a little touristy and expensive but one doesn’t get that opportunity every day.  It crossed my mind that Van Gogh died a pauper.  He only ever sold one picture in his entire life.  The restaurant and many other shops are making quite a bit of money off of Van Gogh’s name and I wonder if his heirs ever get any of it.

Van Gogh's painting of Cafe de La Nuit

Cafe de La Nuit.  with modern improvements i.e. electric lights

Luckily for us the local museum had a Rodin exhibition going on while we were there.  We went to see it and their computers were down so we got in free.   The difference between Canada and France – in Canada they would shut the exhibition down - in France they just let you in free. 

Rodin was a very prolific sculptor and painter and it was amazing to see his “Thinker” and his “The Venus de Milo”.  He was influenced by Michelangelo.  It was obvious in his work, but he tended to depict women as women and not as robust men with boobs.  This was probably because, unlike Michelangelo, he was heterosexual.  His work was amazing in it’s incredible rendition of the human body. 

We lucked out here in Arles as far as artists go - being able to see the works of Rodin and to walk the streets with the spirit of Vincent Van Gogh. 

Telen writes:

I had a great time wandering through the street market in Arles.  It seems that most towns in France have a weekly market where one finds fresh local produce, fresh bread and pastries.  The supermarkets generally have rather poor quality fresh produce and offer mainly household products and nonperishable goods.  I like the atmosphere, watching the locals speaking in rapid French and fastidiously picking through various produce.  We bought a roast chicken and some asparagus for the evening meal that day.  The roast chicken was so hot and fresh that Rand felt its heat through his backpack as we walked home.

Me in Place Van Gogh where he was sent to recover.  He painted the garden in the background