Southern France–Only Two Years Late!

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, July 2014.

Well hello there! No time like the present to finish up my Europe 2014 blog posts! I’ll spare you the details of the delay, but basically I finally have all of my photos in one location and can much more easily post them.

I won’t be offended if you don’t make it through this entire post because it’s ridiculously long.

SO. We left off our adventures in late July 2014 in Morocco. We took a plane to Marseille . . .

Leaving Fes, Morocco.

Bonjour, Marseille!

. . . picked up a rental car (which I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend if you’re visiting Southern France), got lost several times (I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you pay extra for a GPS), and finally made it to our Airbnb just outside of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.

Getting lost was slightly stressful but also one of the highlights of our trip. We got to drive through so many adorable little towns,

One of many cute lil’ towns we drove through when we were lost.

and when we knew we were way off, we stopped at a fruit stand and talked with this hilarious guy and old woman who spoke zero English (well, I guess the guy knew one word, which was the f-word, so that was helpful ha.) but drew us many maps and pictures and bodily gestures to direct us in the right way. Also their fruit was incredible.

The next day, we took this route to visit Les Baux, Arles, and Saintes-Maries-de-la-mer:

First, we stopped at the morning market in Saint-Rémy.

Yummy rotisserie chicken we ate throughout the day.

Eyein’ a bike, per usual.

Les Baux-de-Provence

We headed to the nearby village of Les Baux, which Wikipedia describes as having “a spectacular position in the Alpilles mountains, set atop a rocky outcrop that is crowned with a ruined castle overlooking the plains to the south.” We didn’t stay here for long and didn’t do too much besides walk around, pop into some museums and churches, and take some pictures.

Walking up to the entrance of Les Baux.

Something like “Welcome to Les Baux,” I think.

Arles

Next up, a must for the Van-Gogh fan in our family (Ben). Van Gogh lived in Arles for only about a year, but he produced more than 300 paintings while living here. Arles is also where the famous ear-slicing incident happened.

We parked in a free (!) lot and walked into town along the Rhône river.

The Pont des Lions (Bridge of Lions) was destroyed during WWII, but these pillars that remained were restored a few years ago.

Roman arena (I think?).

Van Gogh nerd.

Cafe Terrace at Night, painted in Arles.

The hospital where Van Gogh was sent after slicing off his ear. Seems slightly inappropriate to be smiling in this pic.

The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles by Van Gogh.

The rooftop of the Foundation Vincent van Gogh Arles museum.

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer

Tryna’ hit dose wavezzz.

Nothin’ like crappy pizza and ice cream on the beach.

Saintes-Maries is all about the horses.

This area of France (Camargue) has its own breed of horses (called Camargues), and they are so beautiful and white.

“Promenade a Cheval.” Thanks to 15+ years of ballet, I know what that means!!

Back to Saint–Rémy

I don’t even remember exactly where this was or how we found this, but I think somewhere near Saint-Rémy we bopped around these ruins for a little while.

Idk.

I guess self-timers make Ben have crazy eyes.

Can’t end the night without a lil’ gelato.

Gorges de l’Ardèche

It took us forever to figure out where we needed to go exactly to get into the town and rent a kayak. Ben dropped me off near a few rental places while he tried to find parking. When I went inside one of the rental shops, the lady told me we were about two hours too late to start, since it takes several hours to canoe and the last shuttle pick-up was around 5 p.m.

I was devastated and asked if there was anything we could do. She called down to the drop-off point and talked to one of the guys there. After a minute or two on the phone, she looked at me and asked, “Are you fit??” while pumping her arms like a speed-walker, referring to my physical condition. It took me a second to comprehend what/why, and then I quickly responded, “Yes, yes! We are very fit!” while desperately pumping my arms. She told us to get our butts down to the drop-off point and take very few breaks once we were on the water.

I somehow met up with Ben and we sped down to the drop-off point.

On our way to the drop-off point.

There were still several groups getting their kayaks by the time we got there, but we continued to hurry, putting our food and other essentials in the waterproof barrel and heading onto the river. We paddled until our arms nearly fell off and then stopped for a quick lunch.

There were a TON of people on the river, which made us feel better but also annoyed during the traffic jams.

SO many people.

Taking selfies on real cameras is hard.

God bless the Milka cookie.

“The Cathedral.”

Quick pic before the camera goes back in the barrel.

So when we get to the pick-up point after kayaking for 24 km at furious speeds (for the most part), we end up waiting for the shuttle with dozens of other groups for over an hour. :/ Oh well, it was a good workout!

When we got to the car, I made Ben drive back a bit along the shuttle route so we could get some pics at the scenic overlooks.

You can already see my leg sunburn creeping in.

The next morning, we had breakfast at our Airbnb before packing up the car and heading to Marseille with a quick stop in Aix-en-Provence along the way.

Bye, Cute Airbnb

We loved our hosts, Daniel and Catherine, and their daughter, Elsa, and her boyfriend, Hugo (Elsa and Hugo served as translators for us). One of the nights they invited us out on the patio for dessert and drinks, and we had the loveliest time talking with and getting to know them.

We loved “Galac” AKA Galactica!

Au revoir, cutie!

Aix-en-Provence

Aix (pronounced eks, we found out) is sometimes referred to as the city of a thousand fountains. There were so many cool ones—below is one of the biggest and most centrally located.

Fountains everywhere 😛

There was a wedding party at this beautiful cathedral when we were there.

We later saw the bride and groom drive by us on a little street in this car.

Our cutie lil’ rental car that I just loved so much! I wanted to take it home.

Marseille

We then continued on to Marseille, where we had to return the rental car before they closed at 5 p.m. We, of course, ran into more navigation issues, and as we got closer and closer to 5 p.m., I started panicking.

Marseille is the second largest city in France after Paris, so navigating all of the signs and roadways was not easy. We finally resorted to using our international data to access some sort of GPS, and as the navigator, I have a very distinct memory of when I told Ben to veer right instead of staying straight on the road that seemed to split into 500 directions and cost us another 5 minutes or so.

I can’t remember if we actually made it before 5 p.m., but the guy working at the tiny office/store front was so chill and cool I wanted to cry and hug him so hard. He didn’t seem phased at all by our haggard and anxious state.

To top it all off, about 5–10 minutes into our walk to the metro station, rental car homeboy came running after us with guess-what in his hand??? Yes, my wallet. I almost started crying again. I had left it in the rental car. Bless his sweet, precious soul for trying so hard to track us down.

We then had several hours to kill before we took an overnight bus to Barcelona, so we stored our backpacks at the train/bus station and then explored a bit:

Bocadillos by the water.

After walking through some evening markets along the water, we stumbled upon the most wonderful (to me) thing:

This group of people dancing the tango to live music. I really started crying at this point because it was so beautiful and I just love dance and music so much and all of the people were so into it. My guess is that they were all students of some sort and this was part of either their class or a performance. Whatever it was, it was mesmerizing and I loved it so much.

Bonne nuit, et au revoir, France.