July 29th - Arles

July 29th- This morning, we take the train to Marseille where our holiday will begin. The train station has proven to be as stressful as airports for me. I think it’s the fear of missing my ride... not sure. Anyway, we get to the train- we know we are on car 13... but can’t see any numbers anywhere. Walk all the way down with 50lbs or so on our backs to having to walk all the way back to the other end. What a great start... not.

The train ride was pretty boring and uneventful. There is not much to see: trees, trees, more trees... so nap it was!

Just a sample -it's much worse than this.

Once we arrived in Marseille, it was odd to hear on the speakers that there are active pick pockets in the station. Great- good to know I guess. We walked to the car rental place and off we went. My first impression of Marseille and the south of France is that it’s dirty and gross.  There are ugly graffiti everywhere, the place looks very rough.   I‘m glad we are not staying here.  Our first destination is Arles.

We drive our Renault Captur down the highway to Arles. Interesting enough, the speed limit changes very often for no apparent reason.  I enjoy the 130 limit though!  We get to Arles and drive around in circles for 1.5 hours. It’s a fricken nightmare. The streets are ridiculously narrow, I can’t tell if we are allowed on said streets or not, half of them are closed, others you can’t tell until you get to the end and then half to back out... omg I am not enjoying this so far.

We find a parking garage and decide to walk to our hotel. Much better!  We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around this very old village. Here you can see Roman ruins- built 100 years b.c.  hard to believe that these buildings (amphitheater and coliseum) were built more than 2000 years ago!  There are also beautiful medieval churches- they truly are unbelievably beautiful!  We walked through the crypto portique; an underground crypt built by the romans.  Very interesting.

It was then time for dinner. I had fish and chips (not great) and Rémi had lasagna- edible but not great either.  I will have a hard time finding things I like. When you look at a menu and you don’t know what anything is... not great.

On our way back to the hotel, we witnessed a shouting/pushing match between a man and a woman over dogs off leash. We didn’t get involved as others did.  The man was yelling at the woman to get control of her dogs- she wouldn’t, got in his face, he shoved her hard to the ground.  Lots of action in Arles!

We are now relaxing, waiting to go to bed... in our medieval looking hotel.