Arles and Nîmes

I know this is super late and I'm in Paris now, but I want stuff on this blog to be in order so I'm posting it in order. These are from the second day of the Avignon trip.

At the hostel. Ross filled a cereal bowl with coffee about three times. Yet he still always looks sleepy.

Random snail orgy sculpture, which reminds me of my fish tank at home because my snails have snail orgies too.

The Maison Carrée in Nîmes. Built in 16 BCE, it is one of the best preserved Roman temples to be found anywhere in the territory of the former Roman empire. The reason why it's so well preserved is because it was rededicated as a Christian church in the fourth century following Rome's adoption of Christianity as the official state religion. There was a widespread destruction of beautiful old temples like this because they were considered pagan, but this one stayed because it was used as a church.

The ever-gorgeous, brave, spunky and witty Valen, and Ross, the empathetic, brilliant, and sleepy Southern gentleman. (I will have to check the family tree, but I am almost certain we are actually cousins of some sort.)

Marta la Catalana. She is so beautiful it's hard for me not to take a thousand pictures of her.

Maison Carrée again.

They don't put ice in drinks here very often, so I kept cool with about eight thousand blue slushies. (Well, they're called "granita" here, but I think "granita" is way too pretentious a name for blue frozen sugar water.) I don't know what it is, but I have a hard time resisting blue food.

In Arles, everyone is obsessed with bulls for some reason. And cattle in general. And ew. (I give cattle their space.)

Spices at the open-air market.

The French are passionate about sausage. [insert innuendo as you please]

Massive freaking paella swarming with flies. Ew.

Dirty, dirty onions.

Tomates cœurs de bœuf

O Mamma, piscia fritta baccalà! (Yes, that's Italian.)

Massive freaking cheese.

Actual headcheese. I nearly hurled.

Anti-immigration poster.

Me and the actual Mediterranean. I swam in that. It was like a bathtub only saltier and I floated a lot, and I laughed so much because apparently the Mediterranean magically makes everything funnier.

Théâtre antique d'Arles. It was completed in the first century BCE.

Because I thought the pillars were awesome.

Me and some really old rocks.

The Arènes d'Arles. Built around 90 AD, this beast hosted a ton of chariot races and bloody hand to hand battles for the entertainment of the masses. Yum.

I'm told that 20,000 people could fit in there.

Same place, different shot.

I mostly just took a picture of this because in the neon sign, "Pinus" looks like "Anus." I have the sense of humor of a thirteen year old boy, and I am unashamed.

Kitty! Granny Jane, he looked so much like Piggy up close that I nearly thought it was him.

The language above the bust is not French. It is Occitan, or Langue d'oc, a Romance language spoken in southern France. It is an official language of Catalonia and is very closely related to Catalan, which is the mother tongue of my good friend Marta.

There's stuff like this all over the place in the buildings in Arles (and in France in general).

Church façade in Arles. There are carvings all over these and they're all unique. Even things you think are repeating often carry different facial expressions.

This almost reminds me of something you might find in southeast Asia on a Hindu temple.

Sea of sunflowers on the way back to Lyon.

Bastille Day fireworks in Lyon after we got back that evening. We were super late getting back and I had to charge my phone in order to get any pictures at all, so my friend Ross and I missed most of them, sadly. However, when I was on the tramway back to my place, something rather more interesting than fireworks happened. The thing was so crowded I could barely breathe, and this drunk lady got on with her kid, who appeared to be about four years old and who was also drunk. The kid was laughing and yelling really loud and this guy started shouting at the mom because of her terrible negligence. I mean, seriously. Who lets their four year old get drunk? That's abuse. But anyways. There were so many people on the tramway that people took sides and a massive fight broke out, and since I could not move I was stuck smack dab in the middle of it. And if you know me, you know that I don't start fights, but I don't let people shove me around if there's already one going on. I came out with a few bruises, but you should have seen the other guys. I didn't take Tae Kwon Do for nothing. And there you have it.