All Roads Lead to Rome , Or at Least the Next Ruin: Day 14 - Avignon to Arles - Hey Buddy, You're Going the Rhone Way - Rhone Source to Sea 2018 - CycleBlaze

October 17, 2018

All Roads Lead to Rome , Or at Least the Next Ruin: Day 14 - Avignon to Arles

Our last day of biking on this trip was everything we could have wished for. No drama, no heart pounding ascents or adrenaline producing descents, just a nice cruise through the countryside pf Provence, largely on our own, ending at a very chilled out hotel in a very chilled out city (as long as you avoided the Vikings ... they continue to maraud!)

More verbiage to come later, mostly in the picture captions ... we are in Geneva now several days later and off to dinner

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SOTD

Loosing My Religion by REM

After seeing what the Romans developed a couple of thousand years ago, and to see it now gone, with European Christianity eventually replacing it (but taking a loooong time to get back to the same level).it strikes me that most societies are fragile and somewhat ephemeral in the grand scheme of things... this song kind of says this to me.

Cheap philosophy done for the day, here's some pics to show what it was like.

Very easy cycling out of Avignon this morning on essentially deserted D roads
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More of this morning's ride south of Avignon
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On Saturday we will be on a train on that bridge heading back north to Geveva
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We decided to ride on D roads on the east side of the Rhone. The official EV17 route was on the west side of the river. I think either side would have been equally peaceful. The east side brought us to the village of Tarascon where this castle was perched beside the river
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It was just before noon when we arrived in Tarascon so we went in search of a boulangerie before they closed! lovely white tiled streets in the town
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If Kirsten gets a photo of riding on white tiles then I get one too
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We found a boulangerie, still open, picked up our sandwiches and this delectable little number ... a caramel mousse covering a very light chocolate cake / brownie .... yum .... However can't say the same thing about the lady running the place ... first outwardly rude person we've run across on this trip ... some cyclist must have ticked her off at some point!
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... after lunch, back to the castle. After yesterday's let down as Palais du Pape in Avignon, we were debating whether to go in ... but you only live once so in we went
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First up, the gift shop where some small scale medieval battles were being waged
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... luckily this castle has a cavalry of Unicorns ... nobody has a hope of defeating them
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... after the gift shop, the guest book, where we encounter this .... Our money was already spent so we just laughed. At least there wouldn't be a thousand other people milling around peering at their tablet screens ... this place was old school, a good old paper map and written descriptions
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... First (empty) room ....that Pam lady from the UK wasn't kidding!
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next, the central courtyard. This was actually quite cool
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... ha... not empty ... quite a nice bell actually
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... and then some very cool graffiti. As with most French castles, they at some point were used as prisons. In this case it was used to house Spanish and Portuguese sailors. The walls in several of the rooms had pictures of various ships carved into them ... yes technically graffiti ... but now seen as historic artifact
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.. not all the in wall carvings were to the same standard ... but they were all interesting and actually gave a story line to the place
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... these interesting rooms were however interspersed with more emptiness (poor old Pam must have only gone to these rooms). In this one I'm about to receive my daily sermon.
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One we made it to the roof the views along the Rhone and into the town were superb
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... looking into Tarascon from the castle roof
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... and Pam, if the room is empty, you can still make your own fun....
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Pam must have missed this one ... several of the rooms had local 'curiosities' displayed in them, as well as the ones collected over the years by the castle inhabitants. The Palais du Pape had something similar, but it was displayed in a way that tried to be serious ... this place looked like their tongue was firmly in their cheek
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.. here's one 'curio cabinet'
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... and this one was the best ... of the castle stuff . I have no idea if this was real or not, but they had some suitable ghoulish soundtrack playing in the darkened room
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.. we were led eventually to the 'local' contribution ... this looked like the elementary school kids having their go at making a curio cabinet ... nice work Elizabeth!
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... and these ones deserve a special mention too ... This castle turned out to be way more fun than we expected ... maybe UK Pam's guest book note set out expectations so low that we would have found a bottle cap and cigarette butt interesting. We got far more than that though and left with big smiles
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Once back on the white tiled roads of Tarascon, Kirsten came across an textile establishment that has been making iconic Provencal prints for two centuries
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... unfortunately we didn't stop to look deeper but found out later they had a small museum that we could have gone through
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We finally arrived in Arles and found our hotel (Volver) just inside the old ancient walls
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Arles, like most of the towns here, is stuffed with Roman antiquities ... this is just a taster of the amphitheater .. much more to come tomorrow
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.... beautiful narrow winding streets
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...and a very well preserved portal at St Trophime's church ... looks like the guy's on the right have a conga line going ... and having much more fun than the guys in the middle
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Have you ever seen a more woeful looking group of guy's?
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Kirsten and I have always noticed that city work crews always had seven men to do the work of one or two. We always thought this was a union rule, but we just discovered that is by religious decree (and since I'm Canadian, I'll apologize if I've offended anyone)
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More narrow streets in Arles
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... and the classic blue shutters ... these ones a bit well worn
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... an another trip cat ... lots of them running around the streets of Arles
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Hey Philippe, which way did the peloton go? Isn't it a bummer when you get dropped ...
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And we finished off with another great meal at Le Galoubet ... drinking local again ... a very nice GSM blend
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.. paired very well with sea bass on risotto with a reduced bouillabaisse
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.. and K's suburb tuna served over celeriac
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Today's ride: 47 km (29 miles)
Total: 901 km (560 miles)

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