25 April 2024 – Arles
By Lidia Karanfilovszka Zikic (Creative Writing and English Literature/Year 1)
It was sunny and warm. A perfect day for exploring. We took a train again and found ourselves in charming Arles on the Rhone River. Arles is famous for many things, but amongst others for inspiring the paintings of Van Gogh and for once being the provincial capital of ancient Rome. It is the home to the spectacular Arles Amphitheatre, still very much in use for entertaining cultural events. We explored the amphitheatre for a while, admiring its grandiosity but what interested me the most was finding the café Van Gogh painted in his famous Café terrace at night. Again, we strolled through small, narrow cobbled streets, each possessing a hidden gem of a shop or a bistro. Jenny, Mariam, and I went to have lunch in a small crêperie and had the most amazing crêpes with ham, cheese, and eggs. We explored some more streets and reached the riverfront, passing the Roman baths. I managed to find two books, collections of poems from my beloved French poet Paul Eluard in one of the bookshops, and I was so happy about this. Even though they were in French, and I did not understand a word. I bought the books so I could challenge myself to learn French and be able to read them. Voila!
We sat down to unwind with a glass of house rose in one of the bistros close to the amphitheatre and treated ourselves with an ice cream before we went back to the train station. This is the kind of life one can easily get used to, I was thinking to myself, all along the scenic train ride from Arles to Marseille.
We had a final night out for dinner with the whole group that night. Everyone seemed so much more relaxed with each other, we were more chatty and cheerful around each other. It was both loads of fun and delicious. After trying different specialities from French cuisine, I concluded that I loved it, and when I got back to London, I got inspired to cook some of them too.
Latest posts by Matt Charles (see all)
- A Marseille Journal (Part 5) - 17 May 2024
- A Marseille Journal (Part 4) - 17 May 2024
- A Marseille Journal (Part 3) - 16 May 2024