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Arles |
A view from a church near the arena. |
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The arena |
One of the highlights of the town is an old Roman-like arena - still used for bullfights today. |
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Arles |
The streets are narrow and fun to walk through. Only one vehicle can pass through at a time, and it crowds the pedestrians. |
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From one of the squares |
A beautiful church. Notice how the weather was really nice that day - very dark blue sky with sun! |
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Amphitheatre |
Antique amphitheatre near the arena. |
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Me by the Mediterranean |
The first time I've seen the Mediterranean. Now I have seen 4 oceans/seas! |
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Me at "El Patio" |
The EAAV dinner was held at a very touristy restaurant and I found these beautiful flowers nearby. |
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The Camargue. |
Rice growing on the Camargue. We went on a birdwatching tour and saw all sorts of exciting wildlife. |
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"Bulls". |
The Camargue region of France is known for its bulls. Here we walked a long ways on a nature preserve and found these 'bulls'. |
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Flamingo habitat. |
We walked a long ways to just barely see a huge breeding colony of greater flamingos. |
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Flamingos. |
This is taken from the bus - you could see the flamingos pretty well. These are wild! |
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Flying flamingos. |
I love to see flamingos in flight. It's a sign of their wild nature - vs. the pinioned birds most of us have seen in zoos. |
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Flamingos again. |
This shows the flamingos in their native habitat and you can see how colourful they are! |
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Flamingos at dusk. |
Beautiful birds - one of the real highlights of the trip. |
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Me on a pony. |
We went riding for 3 hours in the Camargue and near the Mediterranean. |
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Heather and Tracey on ponies. |
"The three musketeers"? Notice the Mediterranean in the background. |
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Me on "Zhivago" the pony. |
I hadn't been riding in years - my muscles reminded me for 2 days afterwards! |
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Me and two ponies. |
I'm not sure they are really Camargue breed ponies. The one on the left (Zhivago) is really cobby and almost dappled. The one on the right is very Appaloosa-like. |
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Riding with flamingos! |
Literally, there were flamingos in this body of water that we rode through (warm shallow salt water). We all got wet, at least a little. |
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The Camargue. |
One of our guides leading a baby Camargue stallion. You can see the flamingos (pink/white dots in the water) in the background! |
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