Arles and Avignon

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Trip Start Aug 27, 2006 Previous
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  Arles and Avignon, France
Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Last weekend I went on a trip with my AIFS group to Arles and Avignon, two cities in Provence that are fairly close to each other. We took the A8, or Autoroute Huit, which is the main highway to get anywhere from Cannes. It was about a three hour drive, including about half a dozen stops at toll booths along the way. At one, we got out for pit stop and found our favorite store called Paul, which is the closest thing to Starbucks that France has. It's a chain (there are a couple in Cannes) of boulangeries, or bakeries, that also sell café-aller, or coffee to-go. Which is exciting because your drink actually comes in a paper cup with a lid that you can carry around, à la Starbucks, rather than the tiny ceramic cups that are ubiquitous in normal cafes. Now mind you there is just one size-8 ounces-and only three choices to drink-café, café au lait, or cappuccino-and absolutely no extras like vanilla syrup or soy milk or even nonfat milk. But still, we love Paul!

01 we heart Paul

So armed with our café-aller, we arrived in Arles, which is a lovely old town on the Rhone River. I got to explore Les Arènes, the fairly-intact ruins of a Roman arena. In the summer, it holds bullfights and concerts, but we got to climb to the top of the stadium and take in the view of the city. I loved all the stone houses with red-tiled roofs, the river, the puffy white clouds. We also wandered around the huge marché, or market, which was like a farmers' market and flea market combined, probably so big since it was Saturday. I was amazed by all the different fruits and vegetables-quite a few of which I didn't recognize-and the vast amounts of meat and cheese that looked like it should have been refrigerated and not sitting out in direct sun. But apparently that's not a concern in France, because people were buying whole chickens off the rotisserie, sausages dangling from the stand umbrellas, fish from a galvanized tub, cheese by the wheel. I got some cherry tomatoes, fresh from a Provençal garden and warm from the sun, and it was like eating candy.

The city of Avignon was nice too, at least the part I saw before it started pouring rain. We toured the Palais des Papes, a huge palace that housed the Pope when Avignon was the seat of the Christian world in the fourteenth century. I had no idea that popes ever lived outside of Rome, but apparently Avignon was home to 20 popes. Then it started dumping on us, and the rest of my time in Avignon was spent shopping and eating and trying to stay dry.

This week there is a Royal Regatta going on in Cannes, which means that the usually gorgeous view out my window has become even more picturesque as sailboat after sailboat goes by

02 part of Les Arenes

. The white sails look stunning against the blue of the Mediterranean and the sky. Darcy and I walked into town yesterday to the harbor, which is full of yachts and sailboats. We wandered around, admiring the grandeur of the boats and thinking about what life would be like if you could actually afford to not only buy one of these massive things but also afford to sail it to Cannes and enter a regatta. Sometimes the materialism and consumerism and emphasis on aesthetics here can be a bit much, but there's enough natural beauty to balance it out. So this weekend we plan to stick around Cannes so we can go see more of the bateaux (boats).

French word du jour: vaut le voyage, which means "worth the trip"

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03 me at the top of Les Arenes	04 view or Arles from the top	05 how the French love their chiens	06 Provencal countryside
07 Palais des Papes, in Avignon; at night	08 me, Darcy, and Laura at dinner in Avignon	09 boats for the regatta in the Cannes harbor

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