On The Sea Again, I Just Can't Wait To Get On The Sea Again: Arles et Avignon

It's 6:30am and I'm up with a few early birds as we're cruising along the Rhone on our way to Valence.

Yesterday was a typical busy day. We started with a walking tour of Arles covering the highlights of the city with the omnipresent Roman Ruins and some of the highlights of Van Gogh's stay there. It was in Arles that he painted Starry Night and Le Cafe de Nuit.

The tour was very good with an excellent guide (unlike the afternoon tour but I'll get to that later). After the tour we went back to the famous cafe for a coffee, of course.

The afternoon tour started out badly as the bus that took us from Arles to Avignon had broken A/C which made for a very uncomfortable 40 minute ride in the 90 degree heat. We had signed up for the Taste of Avignon tour which is frequently a mistake as it is usually an excuse to take you to various shops. At least we had the chance to taste a good wine before our guide took off and left Linda and me behind! But that was alright because we were able to walk the city ourselves. Avignon was quite busy because their theater festival (allegedly the biggest in the world) was just starting. It did make for some interesting characters walking around promoting the 1400 peformances that will be taking place over the next 3 weeks.

In the evening, before dinner, we had the first of the on-board wine tastings with Eric Glomski from Page Springs Cellars. As usual, Eric made the event fun and educational and, of course, the wine was excellent. For dinner, we were fortunate to dine with Eric and Gayle and some other wine club members complete with some more Page Springs wines!

After dinner, we sailed away from Avignon which gave us great views of the city at dusk, the famous bridge (that the popes built to get access to Chateauneuf de Pape and which mostly collapsed), and the excitement of passing under some low bridges as we sat on the top deck.