More Roman steps - ugh!

Monday 31^st March

This morning was a short visit to the Amphitheatre in Orange before heading to our next stop. The main feature of this amphitheatre is the still standing stage back wall. Can’t remember the dimensions, but pretty big. They have recently put a roof over the wall in hope of protecting it from rain and erosion. There is a statue of the emperor set up in the wall. These statues were provided to various venues and had removable heads, so when the ruler changed they just put on a new head. Another Roman structure from the 1^st century – and more bloody Roman steps.

 

Don't like the head - change it

The stage wall - and roof

From there we headed out to Aix-en-Provence via some secondary roads. From the amount of traffic on this road I would say I picked the main road used by everyone to avoid going through Avignon. The driving is improving. I don’t seem to spend as much time going ‘gutter’, ‘gutter’, 50, 50, 50 as I was doing in the first couple of days. You just can’t drive the same way you do in Australia.

Our main purpose in A de P was to check out the Paul Cezanne walk – a walk around town visiting places frequented by Paul Cezanne while living and painting in A de P, and a visit to the Musee de Tapisseries. The Cezanne walk turned out to be a bit of a dud – markings to lay the trail, but no sign at or on a lot of the buildings, or signs only in French.  

The Musee de Tapisseries was pretty small but amazing tapestries from the 1600s and 1700s. I was a bit disappointed that there was not a lot more, and more information on them would have helped. The museum is housed in what was the private apartments of the Archbishop way back.

The Musee de Tapisserie

We did walk through most of the old town of A de P – some lovely little streets and the central area is closed to traffic so you could just wander at your leisure. Shame I’m not really into shopping as there were lots of little shops with some interesting bits and pieces in them.

Streets of the old town

Just a lovely looking building

We then tried to find the area where Cezanne did a lot of his painting. A couple of signs pointed us in the general direction, but then just left us hanging with no idea where to go. Dora tried to help but she came up against a few no-go roads, so in the end we gave it up as a bad joke and headed for our accommodation for tonight in Salon de Provence.

Salon de Provence is really a small town. The maps can be a bit deceptive as to town size. We have just come back from dinner in town where we found only one restaurant (I am sure there are more but they weren’t obvious). It turned out to be a very nice meal and the waiter tried very hard with his little English and our little French.

We are now heading west and towards Spain at the end of this week. The weather has improved and is around 20 during the day and we get to take the jumpers off.