Thursday

Thursday morning, our group got up early to check out of the hotel and meet our professor to board the bus for our trip to Provence. She brought orange juice and croissants for us to eat on the bus.

Our bus driver: Patrick
Our bus: schweeeettt. It seats 30 people...there are 9 of us. Needless to say, a ton of room. And the bus has tables and tvs. Je l'aime. (I like it).
Our travels: through the French countryside to Provence, which is a region in the south of France.

Currently we are studying the Roman occupation of France, which occurred about 2,000 years ago. Provence is home to multiple well preserved examples of Roman structures.

Our first stop was at a rest area which had a cafeteria style restaurant. Not the best lunch, but not bad. There were several cats begging for food on the patio who were soooo cuteee. I may or may not have given them some food. After that, we headed on to Orange where we saw an arc de triomphe, which sadly was being restored and covered in scaffolding, and then we saw le theatre de l'Orange, the theater of Orange. It's the best preserved theater of the Roman empire. It is HUGE. And beautiful. And it was unbelievably humbling to stand in the theater and be dwarfed by its size, its history, and its presence.

After leaving Orange, we continuted to drive through the countryside of Provence, passing through les Alpines. We saw olive trees, castle ruins, and cute villages. We arrived in Arles, settled into our hotel, and then went to dinner.

We had dinner at restaurant near our hotel, and it was delicious. There were three courses (entree, plat, et dessert) and of course, wine and water. I had salade avec fromage de chevre (goat cheese), a steak that I can't remember the name of, and then for desert, glace au peche (peach ice cream) sur glace au fraise (stawberry ice cream). Amazing. Afterwards, we walked around the city a bit. Arles is where Vincent Van Gogh lived for a time, and his famous painting of the cafe with the yellow awning was done here. Needless to say, there is a lot of history in this city.

Exhausted, Lauren and I went to bed fairly early to be ready for our long day on Friday.