I arrived to the city of Arles, located in the Provence department of bougey Southern France, very much of two minds. The Austrian girls I met on the way to Arles were less complimentary. “It’s exactly the same as Avignon,” the more talkative one concluded as our bus pulled into the station. “We’re working at a resort on the seaside nearby, and we come here all the time – trust us.” Well then, I thought, expecting both nothing and everything as I walked up the hill into the city center.
And Arles, if it’s anything, is a city for getting lost.
Arles’ serpentine streets and alleyways were replete with fine details I could have spent days, not hours, documenting, studying and following from one almost-hidden treasure to the next.
This became more pronounced the closer afternoon crept to evening – at one point, I knew for a fact I was seeing the light that had drawn Vincent here.
Back to getting lost: I can’t count how many times I twisted in and out the same rues and pedestrian boulevards from just before noon to just after dusk. I must’ve followed the same sort of path the vines that hang over so many of them do.
When I returned to Arles station after an impossibly colorful sunset – and, what seemed, to be much too brief a stay, although I had, again, “seen” all of Arles – I felt oddly more satisfied than I have after exploring more famous cities for days or even weeks.
And yet, as the train sped back toward Avignon, I knew somehow that the sublime satisfaction I felt as Arles disappeared in the distance was linked to how short, but sweet my time there had been. Light, especially from Vincent’s sun, travels fast – you need only see it for a fraction of a second to carry it with you forever.
Robert Schrader is a travel writer and photographer who’s been roaming the world independently since 2005, writing for publications such as “CNNGo” and “Shanghaiist” along the way. His blog, Leave Your Daily Hell, provides a mix of travel advice, destination guides and personal essays covering the more esoteric aspects of life as a traveler.
