Today’s blog entry is tres speciale, because it’s my Mom, Esther Phillips’ birthday! We are so happy she’s celebrating today, but sad we can’t be there in person to help…so we decided to do some fun stuff today in honor of Mom’s birthday!
First off was taking care of local business: today is market day in L’Isle, so we went down to see about some fresh fruit and other needed supplies. SPARSE turnout of vendors and customers today, which we blame on the rotten weather this a.m. - spitting rain and blustery wind and sky. No matter to us, though: we found perfect peaches, ham, baguette and some fancy pastry confections for a late dessert. The cheese was the most fun purchase. We found a cheese merchant with no customers waiting, so I told him (well, Lynn helped A LOT) I had a “mystere du fromage” and showed him a pic of my perfect ham and cheese sandwich from last week. The mystery: what kind of cheese WAS that on the sandwich? He solved it fast: Camambert, from the Normandy region of France…and he sold me a small container of it on the spot! That sealed our plans for lunch, so I decided to try to make the perfect ham and cheese at home for us today.
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| John's mystery cheese sandwiches |
We eventually ate it and agreed it was pretty damn good, especially with the special wide baguette our friends at the boulangerie sold us, the fresh-cut ham slices from the bucherie, and our market tomatoes used for the sandwiches. As a guilty pleasure, we actually bought and shared a bottle of Coke, and even more decadent, we put a bunch of ICE IN IT! Sacre Bleu!!! Parfait lunch, mes amis!
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| Lynn's package mailing trip to Le Poste |
While out for the market, we also mailed a package of stuff back home, so Lynn got to have several French conversations with the folks at the post office. One of the counter-ladies was a bit rude the other day when Lynn bought the box, but the lady today was grand. Literally a great weight off our return-home luggage! Lynn also helped me at the bike shop. The owner was kind enough to exchange some air cartridges I’d bought from him 3 weeks ago for some other products for sale in his store. It is illegal to carry air cartridges in your luggage on the airplane, so this kept me from wasting the money I’d spent…I got some stuff that can be easily carried in my bike case. Lynn was kind and persuasive, who could refuse her?
The market had a great street guitarist today, playing in the gypsy style, with an amplifier rig he powered with a 12 volt auto battery, and an accompaniment track for each song he played, which was stored on the memory of his cell phone! Fantastic guitar chops, on songs we recognized…so we bought one of his CD’s. ANYTHING is better than listening to French pop radio while driving, so this new music will be welcome in days to come while we drive.
After lunch, we drove an hour or so to ARLES, a city we drove through with great difficulty a couple of weeks ago on our trip to the Camargue. This time, Lynn nailed down where we would go, where we would park, and we picked the non-rush-hour time to go. Worked perfect. We dumped the car, hiked all over Arles using info we got from Rick Steves (our favorite travel guide author), and saw the ancient hotspots!
Frist stop was the Musee Departmental Arles Antiquities - the Arles Museum I call it. Built on the banks of the Rhone River, which has been Arles claim to fame for thousands of years, the museum was fantastic. It had MODELS of Roman buildings, whose ruins we would see an hour or so later. These included the Arena, the Theater, and the Racetrack. The theater model was super, as it showed us in detail what the huge old theater in Orange we saw a few days ago would have looked like in Roman times. The Arena model showed how the Romans rigged a removeable cover over the arena for rain and sun protection, and how the interior looked back in the day. The Racetrack model was super: they ran huge chariot races regularly there, and wagers were made on the outcome just like horse race betting in our time. The track was long and oval shaped, and one of the ends of the racetrack was situated exactly where the Museum is located now! They built a garden outside in the same shape and location as that part of the track. Beautiful, huge, and pretty inspiring to think of what went on at these locations two thousand years ago.
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| One end of racetrack model, showing round end |
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| Museum garden built atop round end of old racetrack, as drawn on porch |
We also saw the remains of a cargo barge-boat that was raised from the floor of the Rhone a few years ago. It sank with all its cargo intact, then was forgotten for 1500-2000 years. They raised it, preserved it intact in the museum, and catalogued and displayed all the cargo and artifacts found around the boat. Cool stuff! We absorbed as much history as we could stand, then grabbed a bus to the old city to climb around the ruins of the structures we’d been studying.
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| Salvaged sunken barge boat & cargo, approx. 2000 years old! |
The Arena (Amphitheater) is enormous, and has residential and business development all around it…you can live in an apartment overlooking the arena. It is well-preserved outside, but covered with modern steel-frame bleachers inside. They regularly use this arena for bull fights and competitions, and seat thousands of spectators high above the ancient stonework. Another example of what we like: people USE ancient structures here, for whatever modern need arises, just like people have done for centuries before these old structures became tourist destinations.
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| Museum model of Arena, with its removable cover |
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| Selfie of us in front of the Arena today - they still use it constantly, but don't kill people |
The ruins of the Theater were pretty, and very much destroyed. Compared to the theater in Orange, this one was not as impressive, because the huge WALL that sat behind the stage was completely gone.BUT, the semi-circular seating area for hundreds of people still remains, and is USED here for modern theatrical performances and musical events, just like that of Orange. Seeing the models of the theater in the museum was really helpful in piecing together what this stuff looked like, how it was used, and what it must’ve been like to attend events.
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| Stage area looking toward audience. See how the huge stage wall got torn down? They still use it, tho. |
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| Museum model of Theater. Huge wall behind stage is now totally gone, see ruins above. This really puts the theater we saw in Orange a few days ago into perspective. |
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| Statute in park next to theater ruin, the big tower behind statute was at one end of the theater wall |
After our adventures among the ruins, we walked down the hill to LES ALYSCAMPS, ALLIE des SARCOPHGUS….the City of the Dead. At one time in the ancient world, it was the most famous cemetery of all, and everybody who was anybody was buried there. Over the centuries, the graves were plundered, stones removed for other uses, religious changes took place, and for the past several hundred years, the place has been a collection of heavy stone sarcophaguses. We walked the whole place: sarcophaguses (some open and empty, some covered) lined the whole walking path. Several small funeral chapels were built hundreds of years ago, and at the far end, a church was built in the 1300’s, with a saint and some other church notables buried underneath it’s main floor. It now looks abandoned and just plain spooky…I crawled around some in the dark with my cell phone flashlight, and was having no fun. On the way out, Lynn found a marker showing where Van Gogh painted a scene in this place: it showed his painting at the same spot he painted in in the cemetery. The place gave me the creeps, honestly, but what do I know about art?
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| LES ALYSCAMPS - Allees of Sarcophagus |
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| City of the Dead church, LES ALYSCAMPS - surrounded by sarcophagus |
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| Descending under church to find graves of saint and city leaders |
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| Lynn relaxes in City of the Dead Chapel |
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| Van Gogh painted this exact scene, right here, see it says so on the sign, with a print of the painting. |
We walked back to our car and headed out to find some supper in St. Remy de Provence. It’s a town we love to see, but have been unable to walk around in yet because every time we’ve come through they have been having their market day! This time it was late evening, we parked, and strolled the main street until we found a restaurant we liked. We were seated outside with a wonderful couple from Michigan, and had a great meal with our new friends…talking almost 100% American most of the time! We got some good ideas for the remaining days of our trip, said our goodbyes, and headed back to L’Isle.
Great way to celebrate Mom’s birthday, huh? Well, we will do better once back in the States. Bon Anniversaire, Mom. See you soon!
LINK TO all the photos we took so far, if you'd like to see more:
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