The first week in Europe we try to take it a bit slow because we are almost always suffering from a bit of jetlag. A small town like Arles is a great first stop, because there isn’t that many must see destinations. We thought if we were able to conquer jetlag that we would be able to check out many of the surrounding Provence towns. We didn’t expect that the Faire Du Riz (Rice Festival) and the start of the Rugby World Cup would make Arles a lot more exciting and limit our day tripping. We did take in a couple of towns to share in this post.
First day trip was to the Palace of the Popes, Avignon. It is famous for being home to 7 different Popes in the 14th century. For 70 years the catholic church was run from the heavily fortified Palais des Papes in this small town in Provence, France. We took a morning train from Arles and started straight off in the Pope Palace. The place was pretty big and the structure has been restored but the fancy palace stuff from the Pope time was mostly missing. They gave us an I-pad like tablets that showed us what it looked like in the 1300’s while we walked through all the different chapels and palace rooms. During this time, the pope was almost a king because he was in charge of the church and also the head of the political government.
Also in Avignon is the remains of a 12 century bridge. The Rhone river cuts through town and during the middle ages there weren’t many bridges crossing the river. The towns that had bridges over the river became important commerce hubs so Avignon benefited from their Saint Benezet bridge (bridge of Avignon). In its time, it was one of only three bridges over the Rhone river in all of France. Now it only goes half way across the river but it is still cool to see a bridge still standing that was built so long ago.
Because of the Pope Palace and the bridge, Avignon is very popular among tourists. It has some beautiful wide pedestrian streets and a lot of old fancy buildings that reminded us a bit of Vienna. We had a good lunch one of town plazas and then headed for the Musee Calvet. We then hit the Musee Angladon which is art museum featuring local favorite Jacques Doucet as well as other known French artists from the 19th century. We had an afternoon Spritz in another square before heading back to Arles on the train. We had a good day and Avignon is a beautiful town be we were glad we were staying in smaller Arles and not Avignon.
Our next day trip was to another Provence town-Nimes, famous as one the great Roman cities in present day France. We took a train from Arles and headed straight for the huge Arena in the center of the city. Last year we saw several Roman Arenas in Croatia and Italy but none of them were in as good of shape as the Nimes Arena. We took the self guided tour using a phone app as our audio guide and learned a lot about the gladiator fights during Roman times. They still use the arena for bullfighting and other events.
The second Roman attraction was an old temple that was weirdly stuck in the middle of town like the Arena. We also saw a lot of temples last year in Italy but this one has been restored to be more intact. Inside were a few signs about the restoration and how it had looked in the Roman era.
The third and last stop on our Nimes Roman adventure was climbing the hill to see an old Roman tower that was part of the town wall. It was a cool tower and a pretty good view but I am not sure it was worth the hike up the hill in 90 degree weather.
We were a little worn out after the tower but did check out some of the parks and the in canal streets on our way back to the main town.
We found a great restaurant, Le De K Le Bistrot Gourmand, that we had heard about on a youtube video and we shared a charcuterie plate and a really cheesy (in a good way!) Raclette burger.
At this point, we were full, hot, and tired and wanted to head back to Arles but the next train didn’t come for 2 more hours. We found a bus that was leaving right away. It took 50 minutes instead of 30 minutes to get home but it also cost us just 3 euros instead of 20. We need to remember to look at buses although we still prefer train travel. We enjoyed our time in Nimes and are glad we saw the Roman stuff. We didn’t make it to the Roman aqueduct (Pont du Gard) because it was a little too far out of town for public transportation, but we have seen aqueducts before and will see another one in our next destination, Montpellier.
On our last day in Arles, we walked just south of downtown to the Archeology museum. While technically not a day trip out of Arles, it was a fun Arles activity for us. We had seen a lot of Roman museums in our trip last year through Croatia and Southern Italy so it was a bit familiar. It had a lot of Roman statues without heads, some heads without bodies, and some statues with heads attached. Most of the statues actually had their noses and penises, which is a bit rare. Lots of mosaics, models of buildings, and fancy engraved marble coffins (sarcophagi). The highlight for us was a 30 meter long barge that was discovered in the Rhone river in 2004. It was from the 1st century and still had a ton of coins, pottery and other stuff still in it that had been preserved by being in river silt for the last 2000 years. It was declared a National Treasure and it took several years to conserve it and put in the museum in 2013 with all the antiquities they found in it. Really cool. We initially were going to skip this museum, but really enjoyed it. Some antiquity museums are just hall after hall of pottery fragments and parts of statues, with no context. This museum was the right size – enough to see, not so much to overwhelm.
Overall, we had a great time in Provence and Arles specifically. If we had another week or two we would have traveled to Aix-en-Provence, Marseilles, Saint-Remy-de-Provence, and Natural park de Camargue. But that just gives some more excuses to come back to eat more Provence food some day.
We’ve now moved west to Montpellier, exploring this part of the Languedoc region – more to come on what we see and do in this area.