Arles

Today we jumped on a train to the village of Arles and made ourselves a day-trip. Arles is known for being a typical rural village on the Rhone River, as a site of Roman ruins, and as the residence of artist Vincent Van Gogh during his most productive period.

The train was easy and the tickets very reasonably priced (about $25 round trip for each of us), and the train station was less than 10 minutes walk from the village center. 

The locals have set up a series of "easels" around town to show off sites that were featured in Van Gogh's art. Touring the easels takes one past nearly all of the Roman and Medieval sites, but the Rick Steves guidebook, unfortunately, lays them out in two separate itineraries. We followed the easel walk, but stopped to look at antiquities along the way.

One of the first was the Roman Arena. This is a miniature of the famous Colosseum in Rome, and was built essentially for the same purpose. What makes this one interesting is that it is still in use! Although it was converted to cheap housing in the Middle Ages, since renovations in the early 1800s it has been used for "bull games." These are sort of like Spanish bullfights, but the bulls aren't killed. In fact, some of the bulls develop reputations as big as those of the human participants.

Very near is the Theater, remarkable because the land is so flat here that there was no hillside into which the seats could be built, as in most classical theaters. They had to create the hill artificially.

St. Trophime church and monastery are next to the theater. The church is noted for being decorated in tapestries, rather than stained glass.

We also visited the courtyard of a former hospital where Vincent Van Gogh was committed due to what we would today call depression or a bi-polar disorder. More painting was the prescribed therapy.

We enjoyed a very nice meal here in a busy mom-and-pop restraurant in which we were the only tourists -- or at least the only non-Fancophones!