Arles; Friday, 08 November, 2024

I’d stayed overnight at an airport hotel, but even with that I had to set my alarm for 04:45 to be up and over to the airport in time for the flight. I had a smooth journey through the airport and pretty early on the flight was called for boarding, such that the plane was all fully loaded with the doors closed and the airbridge removed 20 minutes before our scheduled departure time, and even with a 15 minute wait to start pushback we were still in the sky well ahead of schedule.

That continued all the way down to Marseille where we were approaching the airport and the next to land 20 minutes ahead of schedule when the helicopter landing ahead of us experienced an incident that sent it into the grass off the edge of the runway and our plane into a rapid acceleration and ascent as the pilot declared a go-around. We had to stack for about 30 minutes whilst the airport opened the backup runway before we could finally land.

All of that shouldn’t have been a problem, if it wasn’t for the fact we were parked at a gate with a faulty airbridge which wouldn’t operate, and after 15 minutes of tinkering stairs were ordered instead, which turned up about another 15 minutes later, meaning we disembarked a good 30 minutes after landing, and now behind two Algerian and a Turkish plane that had landed and disgorged their passengers into the immigration hall, meaning by the time we finally got down there the queue was nearly an hour. It meant that I missed both the 11 and 12 trains, and on checking the SNCF app it turned out the 12:40 was cancelled, so in the end rather than making the 11am train I had to catch the 13:10, losing over two hours of my time in Arles.

I walked from the station over to the hotel, checked in and quickly dropped off my stuff so that I could head back out and catch up on the lost sightseeing time. After a quick visit to the Place de la République, I headed over to the Théâtre Antique d'Arles – the ancient Roman theatre of the city and had a good look round the ruins of that before making the short walk over to the even more impressive and even more intact Arènes d'Arles, the Roman Arena which is still in use for Provencal Bull fighting (fighters compete to grab a rosette off of a bull, rather than trying to kill it).

Most of the outer structure of the arena is intact, though a lot of the inner structure is missing, such that most of the seating is on modern scaffolding, but it still makes for a very impressive site.

From the arena I had a bit more of a wander through the city centre, heading back towards the Hôtel de Ville and the Cathédrale Saint-Trophime, having a look around both before wandering further into the old town to visit the Fondation Vincent van Gogh. The artist spent a number of years living in Arles and some of his most famous works were painted here. The foundation houses a changing collection of mostly modern art, as well as always having at least one Van Gogh original on display.

After looking round the foundation I walked on further through the old town, eventually finding myself by the banks of the very wide River Rhône, before walking a bit back up stream to reach the Thermes de Constantin, the 1,700 year old bath house that still has substantial remnants standing.

From the baths I headed back through town, stopping off briefly at the hotel to freshen up before heading back out to grab a bite to eat, having only just realised on the walk back from the baths that with all the problems at Marseille airport I’d completely missed lunch.

Dinner completed I had a bit more of a wander through the old town, aiming to take some photos of the city at night, only to discover that the Roman Theatre doesn’t have any lighting on it at night, but the Arena was floodlit so I was able to take some photos of that, before wandering back towards the station to have a quick look at the Porte de la Cavalerie, one of the old gates into the city and the small section of remaining wall.

From there I wandered back through town to the hotel and a well deserved good nights sleep.