June 5, Arles and Nîmes

Cities on the agenda, today. Arles and Nimes, where we'll be having dinner with a friend of Roger's from his blog.

Smooth driving, this morning. The GPS sends us on a highway that runs along the sea (GOOD GPS, GOOD GPS). The weather is nice and mild. Today, the Mediterranean sports its regulation blue. The highway goes through Marseille. Really, with most walls and slate roofs being pretty much the same colour, a sense of harmony and beauty emanates from the cit, downtown and over the surrounding hills.

We reach Arles after an easy drive. The historical heritage of the city is very much a part of its everyday life. My imagination is on fire as we walk around the Roman amphitheater. maybe 2000 years old, standing near streets brimming with shops as well as offices. Work is being done at the site to bring it back to the way it originally stood in the most authentic way, with period building materials and procedures. For the last couple of years, sports events have been staged in the central arena again, events similar to those that took place initially, like bullfights.





From a small square near the Notre-Dame de La Major chapel, Arles' rooftops.






Coaches bring in closely herded flocks, schoolchildren, tourists from all over the world. We're fleeing.

We'd heard about Abbey of Montmajour, a Benedictine abbey whose construction began in the tenth century. As we visit, we pretty much have the Abbey to ourselves and there's a strong feeling of serene, timeless power. I loved it.














As seen from the cloister walk.

Back to Arles where we found ourselves a bit peckish and had sandwiches sitting on a park bench near a pétanque field. Fifteen men were playing "pétangk" - in the South, the -an, in-, -on, -un vowels are sounded almost exactly like in English, -ang, -ing, -ong, -ung, thus "petangk".

In the afternoon, we drpve to Roger's blog friend, who'd given us us her address but warned us that we would never find the place.

We did find it but that's because she found us first. She was on her way back from picking up her son from school and he noticed the red license plate that identifies us as tourists.

It was an extremely enjoyable evening, punctuated by giggles as well as serious talks. Roger had his first taste of Ricard and liked it (it's an anise strong aperitif drink, like Pernod, very popular in the South). So strong that Roger had to switch to water after that. We had a lazy meal on the terrace of their very attractive house, built in a relatively newer development near Nimes.

As we drove back, we were amazed to realize that French highways, even those toll roads with a 130 km/h speed limit, have no lighting. Surprising, to say the least.