St. Remy and Les Baux

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 painting so we saw a couple of those.
The square still exists but the view is blocked


At one point,  Nicole walked up a hill to the visitors center to get a map of the Van Gogh walk but it was closed. So was the gate to the hospital he stayed in when he was crazy. Apparently,  San Juan day is a holiday.

Van Gogh painted about 200 pictures in St. Remy. There are none there. Like in Arles,  there's a museum dedicated to artists inspired by him. Which is everyone, but both museums exhibit current artists. 

After lunch, we drove to Les Baux de Provence which turned out to be similar to Carcassonne but so much nicer. It's an ancient fortress with 22 permanent residents. There are loads of shops, like in Carcassonne,  but these are more artsy. The village is down the mountain but we didn't go there. It has an additional 400 residents. We didn't spend as much time as we would have liked because we wanted to get to the lumiere show. Nicole saw more than I did. I kept saying I'll just walk to the next opening but I finally had to quit. I would definitely go back.

Les Baux



You drive to the old quarry for the light show. Parking is free but we had to wait for someone to leave to get a place. Luckily,  Nicole is an ace parallel parker or we'd never see anything, especially with this big car.

I know the show exists in Paris but I  had just discovered an ad for this show. I heard the Paris show is in a warehouse so this has to be better. The projections are on actual quarry walls. I would be interested in who did this show and in what other cities it's playing. The quarry has been a venue for other art and musical events so it was already renovated and has a cafe and film room.

You can't take pictures that show all the angles and techniques of the light show. The people who set this up have to be design geniuses.



http://www.carrieres-lumieres.com/


We're off to Nimes today where I booked an air conditioned apartment.  Given the unexpected heat wave, we might stay there indefinitely.




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