Girlfriends' French Adventure: Les Baux

Today we headed to Les Baux, a charming medieval hill town, just a few kilometers from Arles. I'm embarrassed to admit that even though Les Baux is a fairly straight shot from Arles, we still got lost trying to get out of town. To our credit however (actually, to Becky's credit), we quickly realized we were going south rather than north and got ourselves turned around with no more wrong turns from that point forward.

While visiting Les Baux, we got a taste of the famous Provencal mistral winds (and I mean that literally, as dust blew up all around us, into our eyes, nose and mouth). The chateau and town ruins are on an exposed hilltop with not much shelter from the elements. At times, we had wind gusts of 35 - 40 mph! To put it mildly, conditions were not the best for climbing to the top of tower ruins on eroded stone steps with very little to hold on to. To our credit, we only climbed one tower under these conditions until we decided it wouldn't be very smart to push our luck. Joyce, being a few years older and wiser than the rest of us, took a look at the stairs and the howling wind and knew it wasn't a good idea to try climbing to the top. Some of us only learn by doing, I guess.

After visiting the ruins and having lunch, we did a little shopping in the lower town. Becky, Marianne and I each bought a pottery utensil holder that is already proving to be a challenge to lug around. Had to switch arms numerous times just walking the few blocks from the rental car agency to our apartment. Wonder how we're going to manage on the train tomorrow.