Arles

Last Saturday, we went to Arles. It was about an hour bus ride away. Arles was once known as the "Rome in Gaul," so there are many Roman ruins to see. When we arrived, we spent a little while walking through the market looking for the tourist office, where we got a map.

The first attraction we went to is the Roman amphitheater. It was pretty sweet. It can apparently seat about 20,000 people. They know pretty well, because it is still in use!

I thought that was pretty awesome. Starting around 1820 the city of Arles decided that Roman ruins were pretty sweet and they should preserve them. The first order of business to preserving this particular ruin was clearing out the neighborhood that had sprung up inside! There were something around 50 houses inside and 2 churches. That is crazy!

During the Middle Ages, the amphitheater was used as a fortress. Three towers were built into the side of the arena. We were able to climb up one of them, affording us some pretty excellent views of the city.

The tower walls had several stones missing, creating this little square niches. And almost every one of these niches contained... a pigeon! Or two. It was weird to look up at the wall, hear cooing, and notice that there about 15 pigeons all staring down at you. One of them took flight and scared Caitlin.

The second ruin we visited was the Roman theater. This is also still in use, but it hasn't held up over the centuries as well. There were a few columns from the original building still up, so that was cool.

After eating some sandwiches for lunch, we went to the Espace Van Gogh. We thought it was going to be a museum, but it was actually a university named after Van Gogh. It was still very pretty though. It used to be a mental hospital that Van Gogh stayed in. He painted the same garden and the city displayed the artwork in the square, which was pretty cool to see.

Next we walked to the Constantine baths. It started to rain once we got there, but we headed a little time to kill, so we played hide and seek. It didn't work very well though because all the hiding places were pretty obvious.

Last, we went to some cloisters in an old monastery next to the town's cathedral. They had some really cool tapestries on display. It's crazy to think that this was the only outdoors a cloistered monk would see!

Over all, Arles was a fun day trip. The best part was how cheap it was! It only cost 2 euros to ride the bus round-trip from Aix. We bought a pass to get into all the monuments for only 7 euros!