Van Gogh in Arles & L'Isle sur la Sorgue

Friday, March 13, 2009 Afternoon in Arles
This afternoon we decided to continue following the art of Vincent Van Gogh by finding the Langlois Drawbridge… the desk told us which way to walk and said something about 20 minutes…. After crossing the bridge over the canal and descending to the dirt path, which ran along side the canal, we had to walk for an additional 30 minutes before finding this old wooden drawbridge which had been painted by Van Gogh. The satisfaction
Of finding the inspiration for this painting made the walk all worthwhile. All in all we walked about an hour each way with some rest stops and a lunch out of our back packs. We started out with our sweatshirt and wind jackets and I had forgotten to remove my insulated pants from walking this morning. By the time we finished our walk all coats were hanging from our back packs, sun hats were on and I had removed my blue jeans and finished the walk just wearing my insulated pants. You will find a picture of this on
Martha’s blog site which she has already posted. After all this exercise we felt that we deserve a special ice cream treat to eat as we walked the final blocks to our hotel. Dropped our stuff and walked back to the monoplix to purchase food for dinner and the next couple of days. Back to the Hotel for much needed showers and computer time before heading off to the local church for a 6 pm mass in French. Busy Busy Day we have had. It’s so much fun finding our way around in these cities which are full of tiny winding up and down streets, you just never know what is going to be around the next turn. As I said be sure to go to Martha’s blog as she has lots of pictures from today and a very interesting journal to go along with it
Tomorrow we leave for Avignon where we will be renting a car for 9 days.

Saturday, March 14, 2009 L’Isle sur la Sorgue, France
This morning we had a quick train ride to Avignon where we rented a car then we
we drove to Nimes and saw the Roman aqueduct Pont du Gard… huge and beautiful to see.. In very good condition from what I could tell… especially since it was built during the Roman occupation of France.
Then we drove to our hotel… Martha was so great …we never had to stop and ask directions or turn around at all… I was not a lot of help on the map reading as much of it was Greek to me…. But we are settled into the Hotel Nevons and look forward to 9 nights here with exploring Provence during the day. We have a cute little Fiat car that should be easy to maneuver in these small towns on little winding roads. We have the internet but have to come downstairs to the lobby to access it. Good bye for now.