Sunday 4th October

The weather was much improved this morning. We made the easy and shortish journey of 54 miles (87 kilometres) through Nimes and down to Arles where Van Goch and Gauguin used to hang out. We parked by the old city walls.

The city is very accessible. It is easy to walk around and see things. It is mostly pedestrianised. There is a marvellously well preserved Roman arena.

There is also a Roman theatre.

The mighty river Rhone runs through the city and is plied by numerous cruise ships.Regular readers of this blog (if there are any) will recall that we were near the source of the Rhone this last January when we came over the Simplon Pass from Italy into Switzerland.

We took a walk around after dark. It was really warm. I was just wearing shorts and a t shirt. Apparently this is the spot from where Van Goch painted the Starry Night - made even more famous by Don McLean's song. Unfortunately there weren't any stars out tonight. Apologies for poor picture quality.

 

The people on this Rhone cruise ship seemed to be getting their snouts into the trough.

The arena looked quite amazing floodlit.