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| Arles, France |
| Arles is a town just on the western most edge of Provence. This city was once a great capital of the Roman Empire, and even today it remains a well preserved example of a midieval village. As you can see on the picture above the streets are very small and windy and are formed to the shape of the original village. Hidden in these windy streets are well preserved monuments to the Roman empire that once ruled this region. |
| The houses of Arles are within the ancient buildiings and are decorated with bright colors in typical Provencal tradition. As old as these houses and buildings are they cover centuries of ruins from previous civilizations. If you look in the basment windows of the buildings, you can sometimes see the rubble from ancient buildings still visible. The city is quite literally a living museum. |
| The largest attraction in Arles is the Roman Ampitheater. It is a well preserved masterpiece of roman archetecture and is still used today for local events and your occasional bullfight. |
| These are pictures of the Ancient Romans Bath Houses. It was amazing to see the creativity used in order to heat the water. You could see the separations between the elaborate rooms for warm, hot and cold water where people would come for their traditional (and not too frequent) baths. |
| In provence there is an infamous directionless wind that blows throught the countryside. This wind is know as the "mistral". It is both charming and the bane of our existence---adding breeze to hot days but insult to colder or ranier ones. We were surprised to find that there is also a local poet named Mistral. Pretty weird. . .is he named after the wind or did he name the wind? Hmmm. . .deep thoughts. Anyway, Jeremy thinks he looks like Colonel Sanders, I just think he misses fried chicken. |
| A picture of the "Espace Van Gogh" dedicated to you guessed it. . .Van Gogh. The famous artist spent much of his time in Arles and many of his most famous pieces are of this magical city---the one of the cafe at night (which is an actual cafe), the pool table. . .and a rendering of this courtyard. The sun was not cooperating with my picture but I did my best. It make look familiar to you a sit is taken from the same angle as the painting. |
| Beth in Arles |
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| Arles was one of the many trips we were able to make with Beth and of course, as always, we had a great time just goofing off. While in France, Beth developed a borederline scary addiction to Coca-Light Limon (above right) and I seem to have become very pretentious and tiny-coffee-loving (above left). Below you have us modeling in front of the amphitheater (my back was on fire in that black shirt. . .never again!) and in front of the Rhone river. |
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