Provence and French Riviera: Part 2

Wednesday is market day in St. Rémy-de-Provence, so right after breakfast we went to check it out.  I love seeing market days in different towns.     

Every market we went to in France had sooo many different kinds of olives.  Lots of olive oils and olive pates, too.  I would have bought some if we could have taken some back on the plane!

Cutie little olive trees.

People making and selling food everywhere.

One of many fromage stands... French people love their cheese.  They are super big on goat cheeses and an owner of one of the restaurants told us it's because they don't have cattle in the area.  Just goats :)

Vincent Van Gogh was sent to live at the St. Paul Monastery and Hospital just outside St. Rémy after he chopped off his ear.  He completed 143 paintings and more than 100 drawings while here.

His bedroom..

They recreated the garden that was outside his room when living here.  Inspiration for a lot of his paintings.

 There are plaques around the grounds in places that inspired his pieces.  Like this one..

We left St. Rémy and headed to Arles for a few hours.  Arles has another old Roman arena, some ruins, and a fun market.  2000 years ago, gladiators fought animals here for entertainment.  Now, bull fights are held here.  The place is being renovated right now.  

And here's the Théâter Antique.  A first century Roman theater.

We relaxed in a park and ate gelato and then left Arles to go to Pont du Gard... a 'perfectly preserved' (acc to Rick Steves)  Roman aqueduct built in 19 BC.  It always impresses me that people could build huge things like this before all the modern equipment we have today to help them.  You can hike around the sides of the bridge and walk across it.   

View from the bridge.  There were quite a few people swimming down there.  Looked kind of fun!

Jake and our sexy rental car.  A week is all I can take driving a Smart.  Seriously felt like driving a go cart around.  One time Jake hit a speed bump a little fast and everything I was holding went flying up in the air.  No suspension in the thing.  haha.   And obviously no space.  We got away with filling up only twice on our trip though and we were driving all the time... gas mileage is the one thing they are good at. 

 

We headed back to Aix-en-Provence after our little Pont du Gard excursion and walked around the town until dinner hour.  Love that town.  Crazy to me that French people are so small and they eat so late at night.  We ate at a little restaurant called Pasta Cosy that night.. my favourite meal of the trip!  Some of the best food I have had.  The owner is super friendly too.  His wife is the chef.  He sat us down and since he could speak English too, explained the whole menu to us and why he would pick each dish.  After explaining that he drives two hours to pick up his Parmesan cheese in Italy every week, I went for one of the Parmesan dishes.  So tasty!  I think it was the 'pasta cosy' pasta.  Jake got pear and gorgonzola ravioli that were awesome, too.  He brought out like 9 little sample things for our starter.  There were some crazy things, but most were really good.  Like a dill crème brũlée, pears and chorizo, and a green olive sorbet.  And, the dessert was awesome.  It was sort of like hot chocolate molten cake, but it had frozen coconut flavoured  snow type stuff on top.  Sooo good!