June 9
Dear Liza,
By the time we got to Arles, it was lunchtime, and we know better than to skip lunch. Fortunately, we found Le France, a wonderful café with outdoor seating under the plane trees. Bridgett and I shared a chèvre chaud salade avec toasts. This is a generous pile of greens, mushrooms, tomatoes, basalmic vinegar, and rounds of toast with warm goat cheese on them.
It was wonderful, and it even left us room for dessert! We splurged, with a tiny chocolate lava cake, tiramisu, and crème brûlée shared between us. Oh, and coffee to finish the meal (and give us jet fuel for the adventure ahead.)
We walked through the city’s medieval walls and up the delightful Rue de Voltaire. Grape vines, wisteria, ivy, and star jasmine climbed up to balconies and made the whole street look like a painting and smell wonderful.
And right smack in the middle of town was the Roman Arena! Begun in 90 A.D, it was the scene for gladiator games and other violent ‘entertainment’. Being a firm believer in cognitive dissonance, I can hate the games and admire the architecture.
And I do!
This arena could hold 20,000 people, had bathrooms to accommodate them and efficient corridors that could clear the whole place quickly. It is still standing, and still in use, today. The electricity was being updated for the upcoming bull fighting season.
The most surprising thing I learned about the Arena was that in 1822, when France decided the Arena should be restored and maintained, the first thing they had to do was get the people living in it to move out! Apparently, in the lawlessness that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire around 500 A.D., folks moved into the arena and built houses, like a walled village. And their kids stayed, and they built more houses.
A few blocks up from the Arena was the Theater. It has suffered more from “recycling”, with only the first tier of its seats still in place. It is missing the wall behind the stage and all the decorated pillars but two that made it up the decorated back wall of the stage.
But this is still being used, as well, as you can see by the sound equipment being installed for summer concerts.
Closer to the Rhône are the ruins of Emperor Constantine’s thermal baths, but we saw them at a trot as we hurried to the train station for our trip home.
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 