On Monday we stopped in the ancient city of Arles, which was first established by the Romans. You can't miss that fact, as there is a large amphitheatre in the middle of the old town, not as big as the Colosseum in Rome, but of the same type of design.
This part of the Rhone River has been an important trading and defence position for over 2,000 years, with archaeologists finding artifacts from the Ligurians, the Celts, and the Phoenicians even before the Romans took it over around 123 BCE. The city is enclosed by a wall, and as it was so important, the Romans even built a pontoon bridge across the Rhone. Arles was so strategically important to the Roman emperors that many of them made it their headquarters during military campaigns.
We first had a walking tour of the old town, and visited the Amphitheatre as well as some significantly more modern sites - those that Vincent van Gogh included in his paintings. He lived in Arles for 14 months in 1888 to 1889. This is where he had his fabled dispute with Paul Gauguin and cut off his ear, purportedly giving it to a local prostitute who, instead of getting rid of it, took it straight to the police. Van Gogh was arrested and put into the hospital to take care of the ear issue. He was there for a month, and then went to a mental institution in the country, where he lived for a couple of years.
Our walking tour started with a look at the place where the room van Gogh was renting would have been, had it still be standing:
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| The yellow building with the windows would have been where the awning is now. The rest of the building is as depicted |
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| The arena is used regularly throughout the year for the 'bull games' |
After the Amphitheatre and during a ‘comfort stop’ in our tour, we had a chance to visit a small museum of the ‘Arlesiennes’. One of the traditions of the city is that every 3 years a new ‘Queen of Arles’ is elected to represent the city in festivals and during important social events. These young ladies, between the ages of 18 and 24, must be born in Arles, speak the local dialect, Rhodanien, fluently, must be well versed in the history of the city, and be able to put on the traditional dress of Arles, something that takes 2 hours, without help. This is a very prestigious position for both the queen and her entourage of 3 ‘ladies in waiting’.
The traditional dress 
A beautiful beaded bag accessory
And finally, before returning to the ship for our afternoon tour, we also visited the Hotel Dieu, which was the hospital where van Gogh was taken after he cut off his ear. He spent about a month here before being sent out to the country because the locals complained about him. While a patient, he painted a number of views of the courtyard garden:
In the afternoon we had a very interesting visit to the delta of the Rhone River, known as the Camargue region. It is a flat area known for the wide variety of crops grown there, including stone fruits and, surprisingly, rice. Our destination was a manade, a French ranch where they raise bulls and beautiful white horses known as Camarguais that are used to round up the bulls.
The Laurent Family greeted us
Upon arrival at the Manade Laurent, we were taken into their big event room, decorated with saddles from all over the world, the heads of their winning bulls (mounted only after their natural deaths), and tables of their trophies. Lunch was served family style and was delicious, accompanied by a trio of singing guitarists. It was lots of fun.
A spread of salads for each table 
One of the many saddles on display 
Only a small portion of the many trophies the Laurent
family has won in 80 years
Our serenaders 
The main course of beef stew and Camargue's
special red rice
One of the biggest traditional entertainments is the ‘bull games’, which is similar to the steer wrestling competition in a rodeo. The Amphitheatre in Arles is also used. In this case, the bull has ribbons affixed on the back of its neck, and it is up to the cowboy, the raseteur, to get the ribbons off the bull using a peculiar hook. The bulls are riled up a little before they go into the ring, and will chase the raseteurs out of the ring before they even have a chance to get near the ribbons. The raseteurs earn points if they can get the ribbon off the bull, and bonus points if they can get the bull to crash into the wooden inner ring while doing it. That ring is the red one you can see in the interior photo of the Amphitheatre.
During our lunch at the manade, we watched some videos showing the bulls literally jumping out of the ring behind the raseteurs, who had to leap for the first level of seats to get out of the way. The rancher family is in its 100th year of breeding these bulls, and have many, many trophies of winning bulls in this competition. There is a full ‘season’ of bull games, and the bull who manages to escape being ‘de-ribboned’ the most gets the ‘bull of the year’ prize. One of their bulls, named Goya, who lived in the 1980s (they can get up to 24 years old but only run in the games for about 5-8 years) is still legend in all of Camargue.
After lunch we loaded up in a couple of wagons and were taken out into the fields to see the mares and then the bulls up close. These horses are born grey, but turn white by around 5 years old, and have been used to round up the Camargue bulls for hundreds of years.
A couple of 'guardians' rounding up the mares
to visit us. The last two are pregnant and the first
is less than 5 years old.
The cowboys are known as 'guardians' of the
bulls. Just fantastic in their traditional garb. The young
lady in front is only 10 years old!
After seeing the horses, we went through into the next large field and visited the bulls. The patriarch of the family, now in his 90s, along with his son-in-law and grandson, herded the bulls toward the wagons and their life was explained to us. The bulls and the horses are all free to run in their large fields, and as they develop, the horses are trained to round up, and certain bulls are picked from the herd to be the bull games competitors. Some that show a bit of intelligence are given cowbells. Once the other bulls hear the cowbells, they will follow them, so these bulls actually help the herding process.
It is a pretty big herd, but once they got going, the bulls
made an impressive picture running toward us
One of the helper bulls. 
The patriarch of the family
As this is a breeding farm, the cows are kept separately and once a year one lucky stud bull gets to spend 3 weeks with the ladies. He needs a break after that for sure, as the 120 cows on the ranch deliver on average about 90 calves each year! This year’s lucky guy was number 802, seen on a couple of the photos.
That was a very interesting afternoon, and we headed back to the ship to sail out for the first time. At 6 p.m. for cocktail hour, the chef’s team put out a lovely spread of French cheeses and charcuterie.
And this only a small selection! The pan in the middle
has a melted cheese in it
Some local charcuterie
We sailed out toward Avignon, where we arrived around 10 p.m. I'll leave that for the next post.
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