Day 8 Wednesday 5 June

 Arles, they say, is the best preserved Roman city in France. We did a walking tour this morning and it is amazing to me that we can not only touch but still go into buildings that were built as far back as 46BC - that's way over 2000 years old!! There is a small version of the Colosseum here and they still hold events in it, including bullfights, where the men get hurt and the bulls don't. Occasionally they bring in bulls and bullfighters from a sister city, Catalonia, in Spain and have a serious afternoon. The Colosseum was built in 46BC and held 26,000 and has 60arches ( arcades) on each of 2 levels.
The old city of Arles is a city inside a wall and every building dates back hundreds of years with narrow little streets and there was even a market for Beryl in the main square.

On the lighter side Beryl did it again! To go for the walking tour we each got a little box to receive the guides radio commentary and a set of headphones to put in the ear.  Everyone finally got theirs on the right channel and volume, when Beryl said hers did not work to the guide. Well in front of everybody's eyes the guide pointed out that she had not plugged the headphones in.So when Beryl tried to plug in the earpiece to the machine everyone saw that she had the long pointy bit in her ear - well that got a lot of  laughs and I think Beryl was very embarrassed for about 2 seconds. At least it started our group in good humor for the tour.

After the morning tour we returned for lunch (don't want to miss any of those meals) and returned to the city in the afternoon and ended up in a farmers market

Dinner with the Captain for everyone tonight and then we start cruising up the Rhone - The floods in Europe were a concern as a couple of ships on the Rhone could not get thru so people were bussed everyday and put in 3 star hotels - I would not be happy with that!!!!!!!!!
We have to hope the Rhine is not flooded by the time we get there for our second cruise!!

The Amphitheatre built 2000 years ago being used for a Concert

The very friendly Cheese vendor at the market