Dag 27: Avignon - Arles (70.5 km)

Getting out a (French) city in the right direction has never been my strongest point. In Avignon my usual struggle was aggravated by various factors. One were road works and consequently (?) missing signposts. Another, the route I had on paper didn't correspond to the GPS I had. It lasted a while to discover that, and anothet few kilometers to decide which of the tracks to take. We opted for the more rural one. It brought us first in the 'bidonvilles' (slumbs) of Avignon where people live in caravans as if they are always on holiday. Anyway, it also brought us to smaller beautiful villages where few cyclists that follow the Via Rhona will come. We had a nice lunch in a crowded local pub, an experience in itself. In the beautiful town of Beaucaire we got a drink at a club bar that only serves their own members, card and petanque players. The locals studied our bicycles like we observed them.

In Arles we took a local hotel. The manager told us that they had had an exposition of 24 Van Gogh paintings that came from the Kröller-Muller Museum near Ede, where we come from. She also told us that we should not take dinner at Restairant-Bar La Nuit, the object of one of Van Gogh's most famous paintings. The reason: 'outside the tourist season nobody eats there'. Yet another way of saying that one should join the locals. And that's what we did.