Arles, France – WTF?!?!?!

We are off on another adventure! First stop- Arles in Provence. It took us a bit to get here. British Airways overbooked us on our flight from Seattle and didn’t tell us until we just about to board. We ended up spending another night in Seattle and then accepting a 12 hour layover in London before getting to France. WTF British Airways?!?!?! But we survived and we are here in Arles trying to understand what this small town in the South of France is all about. We like it here but there are many things have us a little confused…

We landed in Marseilles and immediately saw signs welcoming Rugby fans to the 2023 World Cup. The last time I was in France was 16 years ago for the 2007 Rugby World Cup. Not a rugby fan but we he a great time watching the England vs France game that was projected onto a bed sheet on a 13th century wall in the medieval town of Sarlat. I am a big sports fan but that may have been the last rugby match I have seen. But France is now expecting 600,000 rugby fans that are going to make our trip a little more crowded. I’m going to enjoy watching rugby again in bars with screaming French fans. We watched the opening game with France beating New Zealand and people were really into it. But….. Travel Planning Bill- how come we didn’t know about this? WTF?!?!?

We knew Arles because we are Van Gogh fans. He spent some of his last years here before his mental illness overtook him, and many of his great paintings are from Arles. The picture above is the area where Vincent frequented many brothels during his time here in 1888 before he cut his ear. The street is a lot more tame now, but Vincent- WTF!?!?!?!

One of the first things we like to do when getting to a new town is search for the local history museum. We can get an idea of the town by looking at their history and then helps us understand the people and the town better. The Arlatan history museum taught us something but I am not sure what. The museum was really well done with tablets in most of the rooms which helped translate the labels on most of the items. But it wasn’t a traditional history museum… it was just a collection of old stuff that didn’t tell much of a story. They call themselves an ethnology museum. Some really strange stuff in there including weird dioramas with disturbing dummies, scary pinata creatures, and a turtle monster. Arles….WTF?!?!?

We walked around town and saw most of the Van Gogh Easels showing the painting locations. We saw the Roman ancient theater and the old Roman Arena that holds 10,000 people It is now used for Bullfighting events and as luck would have it there were 3 coming up this weekend as part of a festival. In France they don’t kill or hurt the bulls so I thought that it would be awesome to see this show in an arena that is almost 2000 years old. But they were sold out. Travel Planning Bill… WTF!?!?!

The festival this weekend is the Arles Rice Fair. Evidently they grow a lot of rice around here and every big crop needs its own festival. The Rice festival is based on a lot of traditions from the Andalucian province in Spain- Paella, Sangria, flamenco dancing, bullfighting, and lots of music and drinking. I don’t really understand. The only rice we saw on restaurant menus was in the Paella which is from Valencia, Spain. WTF Arles?!?!? Why is this a Spanish themed festival in France? Not Sevilla??? I am still confused but I guess in America we have St. Patrick’s day parties that are bigger than Ireland and Cinco De Mayo parties that are barely celebrated in Mexico.

That Friday evening it started to get crazy busy in all the pedestrian-only streets in Arles. People were coming into town to party. All the town squares had music thumping and it was shoulder to shoulder with party goers. They had converted several of the old churches into party locations called Bodegas. They were serving Paella, bull meat, and other Spanish food as well as several bars and tons of people dancing to DJ’s. We did find one with Spanish style dancers on stage but most of the others were all about the oonce oonce music with crowds of young drunk people. WTF Arles!?!?!?

We were still struggling with jetlag and couldn’t stay up to see the parties get real so we started to wander home around 10pm. We saw a group of about 30 people carrying drums and other percussion instruments. We followed them to their next location, a town square a couple of blocks away. They started playing and it echoed off the old stone walls in this plaza. It was pretty intense and the dancing began. It reminded me of all the great bands we have at our Honkfest back in Seattle. The bands were having so much fun playing and the crowds were into it. Another great experience before we had to go home to bed.

The next morning we headed off to the Saturday farmer’s market to get some food supplies for the next few days. We got some fantastic meat and cheese for crazy cheap before we headed off to some temporary stables to see some bullfighting amateurs. They were teaching kids and adults how to hold the red cape and turn slowly to avoid the bull’s horns. Eventually they let out the cow into the arena. It was a bit smaller than a bull but it’s horn could still really hurt someone. They don’t hurt the bulls in France, just tease them with the red cape. We watched several amateurs have some close calls with the horns while still twisting the red cap slowly and looking cool. Why are we seeing this in France? WTF?!?!?

After the Cow fighting, we wandered our way back to the street where we had seen some barricades a little bit earlier. They had set up the street with fences that allowed people to walk through but the bars were too skinny for bulls. At one end of the block was a truck with about 5 bulls, and the other end of the block had an empty truck. Several guys were on horses and rode together to the truck with bulls and released them. These were not the small cows we had just seen. These were real bulls!!!! The bulls rode with the horses to the other end of the block to get into the empty truck. A bunch of kids. age 12-20 went through the protective fence and took off after the bulls. They tried to touch the bull’s butts or tails to show how brave they were. They call this whole exercise “Abrivado” and it isdone at a lot of different festivals in Arles and other towns in Provence. I was so surprised to see bull running in France. It wasn’t like Pamplona, it was a France only thing with one block bull running with horses and kids. WTF Arles ?!?!?!

What a crazy start to our 2023 Fall Europe Trip. We are going to have fun and keep you posted but I can’t believe the rest of our visits are going to be as weird as this one. This festival really surprised us. Arles is close to Spain but we didn’t expect to see so much Spanish influence in France. WTF Arles?????

PS. People have been asking to include where we stayed in each town so I will try to remember to include a quick review. We were right downtown looking over a street with a lot of action and lots of festival bands playing nearby but it was still fairly quiet. good kitchen and bathroom Wifi has been inconsistent but we have still been able to play youtube videos and I was able to get this blog uploaded. Airbnb