Provence was always a place that Samantha in particular, had wanted to visit, so we cruised down to Arles by TGV (high speed train) and stayed in a town called Arles.
Arles is popular-ish with tourists as it boasts yet another Roman styled arena, similar to the colosseum, plus it was also the home to the famous dutch painter, Vincent Van Gogh.
Van Gogh lived very close to the Roman arena in a small house, towards the end of his life. As I recall, this was the place where he suffered greatly from the ringing in his ear and then proceeded to cut his ear off….meaning that he ended up in an infirmary for the insane.
Nevertheless, he painted some classic paintings in Arles, including the bedroom painting we have a print of, plus his café at night painting….we saw the actual café in a local square, which was interesting and largely the same as in his painting. 
We also took a day trip, using our month long train ticket, to a town called Avignon.
Avignon is also situated in Provence and is famous for pretty much one thing….the home of the Popes of the Catholic Church in the 12th (I think) Century. At least, it was for around 100 or so years that the Popes lived in Avignon as Rome was considered unsafe for them....plus, there was some sort of hoo-hah developing between the Roman and French branches of the Catholic Church.
We went through the Papal Palace and whilst not as large as the Vatican, it was still quite impressive and we enjoyed going to both the Vatican and Avignon.
We stayed for only the day in Avignon, but it was a pleasant place to visit and interesting nonetheless.
One other major highlight of Arles, was the food. We ate a fish based casserole, a specialty of the region, called Bouillabaisse, plus we made a major discovery (for us anyway!) - North African food.
We also took a day trip, using our month long train ticket, to a town called Avignon.
Avignon is also situated in Provence and is famous for pretty much one thing….the home of the Popes of the Catholic Church in the 12th (I think) Century. At least, it was for around 100 or so years that the Popes lived in Avignon as Rome was considered unsafe for them....plus, there was some sort of hoo-hah developing between the Roman and French branches of the Catholic Church.
We went through the Papal Palace and whilst not as large as the Vatican, it was still quite impressive and we enjoyed going to both the Vatican and Avignon.
We stayed for only the day in Avignon, but it was a pleasant place to visit and interesting nonetheless.One other major highlight of Arles, was the food. We ate a fish based casserole, a specialty of the region, called Bouillabaisse, plus we made a major discovery (for us anyway!) - North African food.
We ate at a North African restaurant on our final night in Arles and the meal of couscous, meat, vegetables, etc was brilliant!
Basically, it’s a casserole with meat, vegetables and couscous. It was so good, we ate North African meals a further 8 times in a month in places ranging from Spain to various towns in France! Each is slightly different in its preparation and taste, with essentially the same ingredients and style....but all were very, very good, it has to be said.
Unfortunately, we haven’t found any similar places in England, but no surprise there, especially here in the food wasteland of the North-East! 
We enjoyed Arles and Provence and we’d definitely like to get back there at some stage.
We enjoyed Arles and Provence and we’d definitely like to get back there at some stage.
