Excellent adventures in travel
Our route back to Avignon from the Camargue took us right through Arles, so we decided to spend a few hours visiting sites we’d missed on our first flying visit. Our first stop was the Musee Departemental Arles Antique, which has a superb collection of Roman artifacts – and a unique survivor from that ancient … Read more
On Wednesday we headed south to French cowboy country. The Camargue is located in a marshy delta between the Grande and Petite Rhone rivers. It is an enormous area (346,000 acres) of flat land: salt marshes, pastures, rice paddies and sandy beaches. The Camargue is known for sleek white (native) horses, feisty little black bulls, and … Read more
After all that time in the car on Monday, we decided to spend Tuesday afoot, doing a more leisurely exploration of Avignon. We started at Les Halles, Avignon’s food market. There was a rummage sale underway in the square next door. And then we wandered, through narrow streets. Shopping districts. Past ornamental architecture. Found a … Read more
On Monday we drove about 1.25 hours north of Avignon to the Ardeche, a region of mountains, limestone cliffs pocked with caves, and remnants of Roman engineering. We went first to the Caverne Pont d’Arc, an exact replica of the oldest and best preserved prehistoric cave drawings in the world. The real cave (located a few … Read more
From the 18th century until the end of WW2, Roussillon was the world center for production of ochre, that gorgeous terra cotta pigment used in paints and textiles. Improved technology has made large scale mining of lower grade (and easier to access) ochre more profitable than working Roussillon’s deposits, so the village lives on tourism … Read more