Its not fancy-schmancy but this house has integrity. Touch the walls and you may be touching Roman stones scavenged from the theater in the back yard. The bedroom gently holds Provincial light, the light Van Gogh painted filtered through green, leafy trees. Leave the windows open and wake to the soothing sound of a passing rain shower. Hang out the window in the kitchen and watch the parade of tourists meandering up and down the street, checking out the restaurants, everyone experiencing the placeness of Arles - just as you are. Its not just tourists walking the street however. School kids travel up and down full of early adolescent chatter. Locals run out of their cars to grab a pack of cigarettes from the tobacco shop across the way. While the street may be hundreds of years old it is not a museum. It remains an interesting connective passage to the whole of the city.

Even though the house spread out across two floors, we spent most of our time at the kitchen table or out on the streets, walking. The kitchen is as the photo shows and is easy to live and cook in. There are sitting rooms to the side which are furnished with simple seating. The walls look like they are in transition from one kind of treatment to another but the rough, gritty in-between state adds to the honesty of this apartment. The beds are comfortable and we slept deep, more deeply then we have in months.

While we had planned to arrive in mid-afternoon on a Thursday, a French Air Traffic Controllers strike diverted our plans to a mad cap dash from Geneva to Arles via train connections we’d never have chosen but found to be stunning in natural beauty. Who knew we’d be careening through the French countryside on a train/bus with French Afro Pop on the bus radio at 11:15 pm? Thankfully the local property caretaker was willing to wait up for our arrival and not only escort us to the house but also deliver a detailed and helpful orientation to its charming quirks.

In addition to the grocery store near the train station, we found a cheese shop close to the local bridge that was worthy of its calling and a charcuterie near the Forum that looked like the son was a skilled student of his father. Standing in line behind the little old lady with her classic french shopping cart on wheels, you can sense the generations of artistic craft in the meat cases on display. However, the Saturday Market, just steps away from the house, would make Julia Child sigh with joy.