When in Rome

Or rather Arles. We decided to spend the weekend here in order to explore the Rencontres Photographiques -- every summer, Arles has photographers exhibiting in dozens of venues around town. We got off to a slightly late start (I wonder why) and took what I thought would be a scenic route via the Camargue. It actually turned out to be a rather dull road between vines and rice paddies. Not a white horse nor a black bull to be seen. We detoured via Aigues-Mortes for a light lunch and a wander round -- it was in the throes of preparing for the Fête de St Louis this weekend, so there were medieval stalls being set up all over town.

In Arles we wore ourselves out with the difficulty of negotiating our first multi-storey car park in decades, and in S's case manoeuvring the car into a space with about 6 inches to spare on each side -- lucky he's thin, so he was able (just) to exit the car without resorting to crawling through the boot. So we had a little rest at the hotel and then set out to explore the couple of exhibitions closest to us. Neither impressed us, but after a restorative drink in a cafe we found a much more interesting one by a photographer who'd gone to visit seven different men who think they are Jesus reincarnated, from Russia to Ghana. It was really well done, in a completely unironic way, although I think he must have been tempted to laugh a little bit at David Shayler, ex-MI5 spy and whistleblower, now a Messiah with an alter-ego called Delores -- pictured at various muddy alternative festivals in Britain.

Later on we had a very delicious and not too copious dinner at a little restaurant called L'Autruche, highly recommended. It was so skimpy that S bought an ice cream on the way back to the hotel, but in mitigation he's just got back from six days yomping in the mountains, so he needs fuel.