arles

sunday: it was soooo quiet here last night, there was not a sound! we even heard birds singing
when we woke up and that's a first!
a few of the vans around us left early on....but there were still a couple nearby, which was comforting!
walked into town last night....another lovely little place, it all appeared to have been recently 'done up'
with a beautiful lit up church, pinkish purple!, in the centre.
found lots of cats sitting around....all shy though, not easy to hug : (
one friendly one did follow us all the way back to the van...we half expected to see it this am,
but it was long gone....
so, arles...weather bit iffy, but better than the forecast....decided to go for it. only a 15 min. scoot.
parked up near to the roman amphitheatre and went in....wow, i know we keep saying that, but really, it
was amazing! they still use it for shows, incl. bull fights, so lots of seating has been built into
the original shape....even so you can still get a very good sense of what the roman games and gladiator
fighting must have been like all those years ago....
next into the theatre antique, which was almost next door....it's not so well preserved as the one we saw
in orange, but still impressive. also 10,000 seats, but the stage had almost completely disappeared.
we watched a film about how it must have looked when it was built, which gave a better impression - it
must have been magnificent. there was lots of roman 'rubble' lying about, but in a way it was kind of nice
to be able to walk around, and over, all the bits and pieces - it was like a huge dismantled
jigsaw!
after we left there we walked around the old town for a bit, looking for somewhere for lunch, and dodging the
rain - only a few spots every now and then.
found the cafe that vincent van gogh had painted, and realised we had seen the original in the kroller
muller museum in otterlo - which was rather nice.
then had some lunch in a small busy cafe in the place forum, before more wandering in search of vincent 'sites'
- there was a heritage trail to some of the points in arles where he had painted, and there was also a copy of
the picture with a little history....found a few of those, including the famous bridge out in the countryside,
before scooting back to the van for a quiet eve : )