Day 5 – Aug 16, 2019 Baux, St. Remy, Avignon in Provence

Arles serves as a good base to explore the Provence area.  We visited Les Baux, Saint Remy, Avignon, and Pont du Gard today, all within an hour of driving to each other, and all with its own attractions.

Les Baux-de-Provence is a spectacular castle ruin set on top of a rocky hill.  It is quite popular as we would find out later that our parking spot (just behind Yiling) was snapped up quickly and late visitors had to walk a long way

Interesting fact:  Bauxite (i.e., Aluminium ore) is named after this village when it was discovered nearby back in 1821!

We walked past a small village (and lots of tourist shops) on the way up to the castle ruin

As we got near the top, more houses lied in ruin

A ancient catapult on display on top of the castle

This strategic site overlooks the flat fertile land below

The castle was abandoned in the 15th Century

Literally a view to die for (if you slip)

There are only about 500 inhabitants here in the village.  Olive oil and wine grapes are the main crops here

Saint Remy de Provence is a quaint town in Provence

We found peace and quiet once we stepped away from the main touristy streets

Many beautiful side streets looked deserted

Famous Van Gogh was treated here in the psychiatric hospital.  We even located a spot where he did one of his paintings below

Below: The Road Menders, by Van Gogh, 1889.  Above: Actual street where he did the painting.  Not much has changed in the neighborhood after 130 years

Vast Pope Palace in Avignon.  Seven popes stayed in Avignon rather than Rome for 67 years from 1309-1376 to get cozy with the French Kings

The beautiful fascade of Hotel des Monnaies located directly across Pope Palace.  It was built as a lodge for cardinals during visit

Avignon Cathedral standing next to the Pope Palace

Avignon is still surrounded by the Ramparts, a beautiful medieval fortification with towers and gates

Unfortunately, we forgot to see this bridge to nowhere, Pont d'Avignon.  A bridge was built in 1234 but collapsed often during floods.  The maintenance was finally abandoned in 17th Century

Pond du Gard - a Roman engineering wonder to bring water to the city of Nimes from Uzes 50 km away!

Most of the aquaduct was build underground in tunnels.  Some sections were built on the surface or on arched bridges like Pont du Gard

Incredibly, its gradient only dropped 17 m over the whole length of the aquaduct!

The top level of Pont du Gard is 275m long across the Gardon River.  It was still in use as late as 6th Century