Quimper Hittys

Constance, Tansy and Aurelia traveled West from Cabriès to visit the Musée Départmental Arles Antique. Click here for a link to this Museum, which has wonderful exhibits about life and trade in the Roman city of Arelate, founded in 46 BCE by Julius Caesar…the girls were very impressed by the mosaics!

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The museum has an almost complete wooden riverboat. This barge would have taken on a load from sea-going vessels, then be hauled upstream by people on the towpath. Then the wine, oil, and fish-paste-filled amphorae; lead ingots; marble etc  would be emptied at the next river port, and the boat was poled back down to Arelate for another load.

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The girls found the giant amphorae very daunting! Luckily they also found some miniature ones, as well as tiny lamps and glass vessels.  There must have been little Gallo-Roman girls playing house with their Hittys in ancient Arelate, don’t you think?

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This cat-shaped oil lamp was not small enough for a Hitty dollhouse, but the girls would like to have made friends with it anyway…

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…but the guys on the sarcophagus seemed too preoccupied to pay attention to small wooden girls.

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The beautiful gilded bronze Victory looked friendly enough, but she was enclosed in glass!

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After lunch, we traveled south to the Camargue region – the delta at the mouth of the  Rhône river…

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…where we saw huge heaps of salt.  Sea water is let into flat areas and left to evaporate.  Giant machines collect the salt…

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…and take it by conveyor belt to the factory for processing.

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As with all major deltas, even partially industrialised ones, the area is used by a multitude of birds, we saw swans, black ibis, and flamingos!

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Down at the beach, the girls collected shells, and enjoyed the sound of the waves…

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…sat on a beautiful shell-enhanced sandy bench…

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…and wriggled their feet in the sand at the edge of the Mediterranean!

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