Southern France: Nicole DriVes

No more sighteseeing for us. We could barely walk around the last two days and now we're facing temperatures of over 100. We are currently in an air conditioned apartment-hotel close to Aix-en-Provence. Our plans include sightseeing from an air conditioned car. We've been in Nimes for two nights and drove the backroads to Orange one day. On the way, we drove through more cute,  quaint towns which are the highlight of the whole trip. It's amazing how good the roads are whether they're motorways or one lane roads.  Nimes and Orange both have famous arenas. The one in Orange has concerts and other events and the one in Nimes has gladiator demonstrations. Arena in Nimes Orange St. Perpetua, Nimes We saw the side road for the Chateauneuf du Pape so we drove to it. The actual winery is outside the city. The town is on a hillside and the streets are so narrow that they've made a one way route so people can drive in and out. We found parking at the top but...

Van Gogh and his artist buddies came to Provence because of the light here. It really is beautiful.  Gigantic white clouds. Blue skies that change tint throughout the day. 16 hours of light in the summer. The drive to St. Remy takes you through adorable small towns and the town itself is lovely.  Lots of farm houses where you can buy local olive oil. We drove through St. Etienne which is mentioned in guidebooks as one of the most beautiful towns in southern France. The description of most of these small towns includes the idea that you will see how French people really live. There's limited parking in the touristy towns and you have to pay about 3 or 4 euros an hour. We drove around for awhile to park close to St. Remy. We didn't go to the  historical sites because they were about 1.5 kilometers down a hill which means it's the same distance back up. I can't walk that far. As in Arles, there are reproductions of Van Gogh paintings next to the places he was painti...

We had a big plan to drive to St Remy and Les Baux de Provence today but I had a back spasm when I got up and it took 3 hours before I could walk upright. Once I felt I needed to walk, we decided to go to the Van Gogh foundation which is a minute away. It has 4 terrible Van Gogh's on display but sometimes has exhibits of his works from other museums. The mission of this foundation is to pay tribute to Van Gogh and display art inspired by him. The main exhibit now is by a Georgian artist, Niko Pirosmani. He was not famous during his lifetime but about 200 paintings remain and he is now exhibited throughout the world but especially in Georgia. The exhibit is great but I haven't figured out what he has to do with Van Gogh. He was the first influential avant garde Russian artist so maybe that's it. There were other modern artists whose work paid tribute to him. View from the top of the Van Gogh Foundation On the walk back, we saw another small gallery with beautiful jun...

We saw all of Arles, but let's get to the important thing. Laundry at the Speed Queen. Once again, for all I know we have this kind of laundromat in the US but I haven't walked into one in a while. Nicole always over packs so she had lots of dirty clothes but she had sand in her suitcase from the delta and had also spilled sugar in it.  We decided to wash everything whether we're going to wear it again or not. The clothes filled the bigger suitcase which Nicole rolled to Speed Queen.  It didn't look odd because most rentals are by the river and we see people all day rolling suitcases to walk to their airbnbs. The coolest thing about these washers is they add detergent and softener automatically. No buying it or deciding how much detergent or softener to put in. Or, more importantly, what to buy. I'm convinced I once washed clothes in softener only. Laundry words are hard to decipher in other languages.  The large washers cost 8 euros, the small cost...

It's over a 3 hour drive from Carcassonne to Arles if you take mainly backroads. Wine country is beautiful and there's lots of wineries. Some of them serve food but they're all off the highway and you can't tell when they're open.  Our Carcassonne place was like an old-fashioned motel. Six units with doors to the outside. People in the other 5 all had dogs. It was small but very cute and had a great shower. I chose it mainly because it's a very short walk up a hill to the city. As for Arles, it was a big mistake to try to book someplace the day before arriving. Most hotels are expensive and I wanted more room anyway.  Looking for places at midnight drove me insane so I waited for the morning to book. First I had chosen a studio apartment and paid the deposit but didn't realize it just had 1 foldout sofa. No bed. I contacted the agency and asked if I could switch to a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment and that's what we got. The apartment is in an anci...

Here we are on Le Petit Train de Perpignan. I thought it was for children but the earliest train was full of school children while ours was adult tourists. Mostly French. I know that because only nonFrench people were given headphones to plug into the tape player. French blared from speakers in the train. It was difficult to take pictures because you're riding on narrow streets and pedestrian sidewalks with buildings in both sides. Dali was here. He loved Perpignan  There is only one section of the walled city left. The rest was torn down in 1906 to expand the city. They saved the part that had houses built into the walls. Even though there are 10 tour trains a day, many people waved and yelled Hola or Bonjour as we went by. Many people in this region speak both Catalan and French. The children's choices for languages on the train were only those two. There's a lot of construction in the old town. I'm guessing they're trying to attract touris...