Over the hills and through the Luberon

The first full day with the rental car (an ugly little Renault 'Modus', which must be Latin for 'hideous little bridge troll'). Relearning how to drive a stick, negotiating narrow one way streets and the ever-challenging roundabouts in the space of ten minutes was a little scary at first, but soon settled to a minor panic. I actually enjoy driving in Europe.

I drove northeast into Les Alpilles, a small range of limestone peaks and into the area called Luberon east of Avignon with its gentle hills and valleys alternating vineyards and olive trees. Picturesque, a rather redundant term around here, villages and chateaux abound.

Les Baux de Provence



Panorama from the Saracen Tower



First Le Baux, a fortress hilltown built on an immense limestone crag; an impenetrable chateau during the middlw ages, now a stark ruin.

St. Remy de Provence

The small town of St. Remy is charming and a good stop for lunch. This was the birthplace of Nostradamus (but of course, you knew that) and the sanitorium where van Gogh stayed after his ear-capitation, and where he painted Starry Night (the village in the scene is San Remy).

Roussillon

The final stop was the hilltop town of Roussillon. It is most famous for the earth on which it rests, some 17 shades of ochre, between a rusty red and an obscenely bright yellow. The buildings reflect this riot of color down to the mortar used. East of the village is a huge mine where you can walk through what feels like an amped-up bowl of sherbet.

Arles

 

Sketching from the Amphitheater, looking into Arles with the River Rhone in background

My base in Provence is the relatively small town of Arles on the banks of the Rhone River, where it languidly splits into its branches, creating a broad delta of marshes before emptying into the Mediterranean. The city has a population of 50,000 and is surrounded by a verdant plain of agriculture, as it has been for thousands of years. I find the city has a quiet, gritty quality, relaxed in its vast history of ancient importance, content as an irascible old man that has seen better days.

Arelate became a Roman settlement in the 2nd century BCE but was always secondary to the port of Massalia (modern day Marseilles) to the south. This changed when Arles backed Julius Caesar against Pompey in the civil war and was rewarded with a transfer of power from Massalia and the establishment of the Colonia Iulia Paterna Arelatensium Sextanorum (Ancestral Julian colony of Arles of the soldiers of the Sixth Army). This set up Arles as the regions’ most important city for centuries. This is particularly poignant for me: the hotel where I lived as a student in Rome was built on the ruins of the Theater of Pompey where Julius Caesar was murdered by senators.

The city declined after the fall of the western empire, but did enjoy a resurgent importance through the Middle Ages as a stop on the pilgrimage route to Santiago in Compostela. Van Gogh would later find a great deal of inspiration here when Arles had faded into a quaint town in the 1800s. Here is where he cut off his ear.

My favorite meal was here, Le Criquet

Tourists come here during the day to take in the Roman ruins, but are mostly gone by sunset. There is a lack of tacky souvenir shops. The city is still occupied by locals with few hotels, so an evening stroll is mainly among real townfolk, doing their townfolksy things: the boulangeries and patisseries are busy selling breads and sweets to Arletans hurrying home for dinner; bars and cafés are filled with the mainly young having a pastis or some other drink to cut the chill of the evening. Off the main streets are the small passageways and lanes of homes that front right on the road. Low chatter, the laughs of children, televisions and the sounds of the kitchen as dinner is prepared reverberate off the ancient hard walls and you feel intrusive, so you don’t linger out of politeness.

As in interloper in this scene, I can enjoy the verité of local life.

Nice, Enough

Along the Promenade des Anglais

Most times, to arrive at a place, you have to transit through other places. These may be fascinating destinations in themselves, but you have to keep your eye on the prize. My trip to the Lower Rhone valley, centered on Arles and Avignon has been a 3 day journey, the bulk of it the flight/transit/flight waltz of LA to Amsterdam to Nice. Nice is the big city in Provence with the big airport. My flight arrived late in the afternoon, so I opted to stay a night in Nice and make the onward journey to Arles by train today.


An evening and short morning in Nice is certainly not enough time for a comprehensive exploration of this important southern French city. To ward off jetlag, I needed to stay awake until about 11 pm. So I set out to take some dinner. I walked the main drag through town, the Boulevard Jean Medecin, a wide street with all the big department and chain stores, still festooned with Noel décor. The streets were full of locals sharply bundled against the chilly night. The boulevard ends at the grand Place Massena, sporting a high-tech patina of electronic Christmas decorations blinking at a rate that would induce seizures if gazed upon too long. On the other side of the Place is the old city, with a tighter, ungridded street layout. Bars and restaurants make this a much lively district and I enjoyed a slow reconnoiter, sans map, to take in the atmosphere. Ended at a small, unpretentious restaurant. Soupe au pistou. Entrecote with both an aioli and a gorgonzola sauce. Grilled eggplant. Frites. Delicious Provencal fare. Then back to the hotel to pass out.

Nice, particularly the Old City, has its charms, but I am certainly glad I did not spend more time there. An early morning walk along the Promenade des Anglais, the famous seaside walk along the Mediterranean was enough to get a sense of the pleasure aspect of the Riviera, even in the dead of winter, but there is so much more to see both west and north of here.

As I write this, I am on the TGV heading west along the coast towards Marseilles, then north to Arles. There are some interesting stops on the way that stir the imagination; Antibes, Cannes, but those are for another time; for now they are just part of the transit process.