On the Road: Arles, France

I love France. I'll just start there. Every time I hear stories of rude French people I just can't bring myself to believe it. It's not my experience. France can be confusing and I must confess I rarely feel chic enough to be within its borders.

But after eight days in Spain, I couldn't wait to go to France!

Our trip from Barcelona to Arles was our longest (more than seven hours on three trains). We awoke early in Barcelona and made our way to the train station and settled into our seats for our first trip to the Spanish/French border. Silly American me, I made the assumption that there would be massive queues and hordes of people at the train change. However, we got off of the train and with everyone else marched to the one other train waiting there for us. I believe this is when Sergio came back with, "You know, perhaps you overworry at times?" to which I am sure I replied not in kind.

With our snoring neighbors!

We had one last change to get to little Arles, and we were seated across the car from a couple who had returned from Singapore, judging by their tags on their huge suitcases. It was a very full train and the end-of-car luggage spaces were full. The racks above the seats were quite small, or at least not as deep as one would expect. With much joy and laughter, the couple tried to get their (very heavy) bags somewhere, but eventually gave up and fell asleep with them on their laps. Have you ever slept with fifty-pound roller bags on your lap? I haven't. Perhaps it was a long flight home. The man was the loudest snorer I had ever heard. It was fantastic to see people so good-natured about a travel inconvenience, and a good reminder as to why we took small backpacks!

We arrived in Arles and it was warm and sunny, so, bags on back, we started the twenty-minute walk to our hotel. I had never heard of Arles until I started researching for this trip, but it was, hands-down, my favorite stop on the trip. It is a sleepy little town in Provence on the Rhone River, with powerful winds and clear, clean air. It was a Roman outpost, so there were Roman structures that were almost 2000 years old! It was a prosperous city because of its place on the river, though it went through stages of rich and ruin. The old street plan is partially intact, though there are different building styles mixed in throughout. Our hotel was incredibly charming and our cheapest of the trip (and a nice introduction to France before the crushing prices of Paris, our next stop). After a day on the train, we were eager to get out and explore and get our bearings. Arles was very walkable, one of its best qualities!

Watching over Arles

We wandered through squares and narrow streets, peeked into shops and watched children laugh and play. And, as it so happened, it was Sergio's 29th birthday! To make up for spending most of it on a train, we went out to a very nice dinner where I had, possibly, the best tomato salad of my life. We had a lovely little three-course dinner in a cafe and were treated so nicely. My French is passable for basic interactions and Sergio speaks none, yet everyone was incredibly kind to us in Arles -- small-town hospitality transcends borders, I suppose. Right before we left, I taught Sergio how to ask for the bill -- "L'addition, s'il vous plait." He kept repeating it to himself for a minute or two, and then when the server returned he said confidently, "L'addition, por favor!" She had a good chuckle and so did we.

Mi querido with the Rhone behind him! 

Another thing we liked about Arles is that there was less to do -- which sounds a little counterintuitive, right? But after spending time in cities like Barcelona or Madrid, which one can't possibly really know on a local, intimate level until you've lived there for years, it was a relief to flip to a thinner section of the guide book and realize that we really could visit the top restaurants and the top sites and have time for aimless wandering.

The crypts were super creepy.
And the amputee has returned! 

We wandered in the underground crypts (Roman). I'm not sure why I found them so disturbing -- when I visited Paris five years ago, I made it through the mile of underground crypts, lined with bones and skulls fashioned into hearts. Yet the empty, deserted nature of the crypts here made me a little queasy, which was an odd feeling.

I much preferred the Roman arena, though only small parts of it actually dated to its original structure, built almost two thousand years ago. It is still used for bullfights, so they have added modern bleachers on top of the old seats. During the middle ages, it was used as room for extra housing. The historically-minded person in me was saddened by the decay of the place, but it is amazing to realize that you are walking on the stone steps that have been trod for so many hundreds of years! We had the arena almost entirely to ourselves as the sun was setting in the sky, and it was one of my favorite stops on the trip.

Arles also had a delightful little museum detailing the history of the period and it was chock-full of artifacts, including a boat from the 5th century that was recovered from the river a few years prior. Unfortunately the were no signs or anything beyond a basic brochure in English, so we were left to our own devices a bit. One of my favorite areas of the museum were the mosaics, recovered from a variety of houses in the city. How amazing to live in a house with such artisan floors! I think of how I take my soft, fuzzy carpet for granted and wonder if I could ever appreciate something that intricate!

Overlooking mosaics in the museum

One of my favorite experiences in Arles was the market day on Saturday. Nothing seems more European to me than an outdoor market, though as people have reminded me, there is a great farmer's market in Kirkland a mere five minutes from work. That being said, the excitement of the market seems to be much greater in these small towns. I had a feeling that everyone -- everyone -- from the town turned out, and it was possible to complete all of your grocery shopping, as well as busy almost any household good or type of clothing you could imagine. The sections of the market were somewhat distinct, but suddenly you went from the discount bins of lingerie to the ice-filled buckets of seafood! Sergio bought a very, very expensive piece of nougut, while I browsed the soap. I also bought some very nice sea salt from the region and a tiny wooden scoop that was hand-carved. It was one of my favorite markets ever! We grabbed sandwiches from a cafe and found a nice bench next to a large pond where we could people-watch, and because I was wearing a skirt, I got two of the biggest mosquito bites I have ever had in my life. We started walking after that.

Olives, nuts, and fruit for sale!

Picking out soap at the soap stand. The lady here tried to short me half of
my change. I read Rick Steves, lady. I know how to count my Euros! 

The other big experience was a four-hour "safari" tour that we decided to take to see more of the natural wonders near Arles, including a huge wildlife refuge. With a name like safari, I thought, this has to be good. So we climbed into a large open jeep along with four Aussies on the "English tour" with an old, crusty Frenchman who spoke very, very little English.

"Ze rice from Carmangue, it is the best rice in ze world!"

Maybe it was a language barrier -- or just a tourist trap -- but there was no "safari" experience. It seemed to be a four-hour tour of this gentleman's favorite fields, farms, and bullrings. It did help us understand a bit more about the landscape, though. We got to visit a rice farm (field? bog? farm seems too grandiose for what we saw) and then he told us about how much better this region's rice was than any other rice in the world. Right. We also learned more about bulls and bullfighting than I ever thought we could and I saw enough bulls on this trip to last me a lifetime. I learned that the unimpressive bulls are turned into steaks (which explained why bull was such a feature in the restaurants in town). I learned that bulls in Carmangue don't really enter the ring to fight until they are four or five years old. I learned the difference between French and Spanish bulls -- "Ze French bulls, zey have 'orns zhat go forward and ze Spanish bulls, zey have ze 'orns zhat go up to ze sky! Ze French bulls, of course, zey are ze best bulls in the world. Yes, ze best bulls in the world, ze bulls from Carmangue!" Imagine it with a fist pump and you've got it.

Quiz: What kind of bull am I?

What was particularly frustrating about the tour was not that his English was poor -- it was that it restricted the sorts of questions we could ask. Oftentimes I found myself wanting to ask a follow-up but my French was too poor to phrase the question in a way that made sense and matched words in my vocabulary. One of the Aussies said, "I know you're not going to understand this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway..." and proceeded to ask a question. He did not understand.

My favorite stop of the tour was when we stopped to feed some horses -- and by "we," I mean the driver and myself. See, I get terribly carsick (ask poor Sergio about this!) and so it's always best for me to sit up front. When I imagined this safari tour, I thought of our tour in Sedona, bouncing up and down hills and careening around corners. This jeep was so old and beat-up that we had tour buses and farm trucks roaring by us as we drove on the shoulder of the highway -- my fears were certainly misplaced! So we stopped to feed some horses and because I was in the front seat (or was, by a factor of five, the cutest female in the jeep), I got to feed the horses! What fun!

"Ze best horses in ze word, zey are from Carmangue!"

I'm not sure that I would rush back to Arles -- we did see everything we had come to see -- but I am eager to return to Provence! We went this trip without a car, which made it much more difficult. I can imagine renting a car and driving from small town to village some day, and I found myself wanting to linger. By this point, we had been away from home for more than two weeks, so I was longing for something a bit more familiar. What a perfect time to head to Paris! You can see more of the photos linked from my G+ page. And with just Paris and Amsterdam to finish up, I'll be done with the 2013 Europe Trip blogs!

xo,
Sarah

My sea salt and small scoop.

At a local training arena for bulls

Sergio with his tiramisu du jour