Arles, France!

France. Honestly never thought I would ever make it here. Sure, Spain and Portugal were always going to be a definite as the ship I was on (Liberty of the Seas) was stopping there whether I wanted to or not. But the idea of driving up through France was a reality I was beginning to question...

View of Arles from top tower of Amphitheatre

Arles was our first stop. My first impression was that it was windy and cold. Much colder than I thought it would be. On the best of days it was 19 degrees, minimum 3. Needless to say I was less than prepared.

Scarily narrow streets are a hard thing to stop be scared about. Driving on the right hand side when your accustom to the left is one thing, but doing it on a street barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other is a different thing entirely. Once I managed to get over the fear of having a head on collision or my side of the car being wiped out by a pole, I began paying attention to the buildings and people. The architecture is so uniquely beautiful. At first it was just a bunch of orange, white, and pink buildings, but after a few minutes of staring I noticed the details in the window sills. How each house had it's own individual style from different ages, how the personality of each house managed to remain unique in a city that looks the same. 

Inside the Amphitheatre

Once we reached our hotel and had settled, we walked around for a while looking for somewhere to eat dinner (thankfully Grandad is fluent in French so finding a menu we all liked wasn't too hard). Once that was sorted and our reservations made we walked across the road from our hotel and went inside the amphitheatre. I thought something that old wouldn't have modern structures inside it, let alone still host festivals. At the time of our exploration a gladiators class was going on inside. We sat down and watched them fight for a while before we moved on to dinner.

Gladiator's lesson

Food in France I am told is amazing. I expected great things when I ordered my food. Gladly, I wasn't disappointed. Unfortunately there were no frogs legs or anything exotic or native to try, just duck, fish, and lamb. Whenever I eat meat I generally don't notice much difference in quality or taste unless it's terribly good or bad. Vegetables I tend not to eat. Obvious reasons; 1) They don't taste great and 2) they don't contain my favourite thing of all, sugar. I wasn't surprised at all with the meat, but the vegetables... I couldn't stop eating them. I'm not sure what they did to them but they were amazing. Hopefully tonight's vegetables will be just as good if not better.

The following morning (this morning) we packed up everything and moved on to our next stop, Pont Du Gard and Millau!