Is Arles, France the perfect town?

Existentialists,

Arles is Provence, but it’s also… not Provence. It’s not the Provence of Peter Mayle. No countryside, no pools (mostly), no mas. It’s a town… a small one. But it’s a small town with a legit Roman arena in it. And great restaurants. And a weekly market. And art. And festivals. It has energy and culture and a whole lotta townhouses I would like to buy and fix up, asap.

I knew nothing about Arles and wasn’t even planning to visit until I was messaging with designer Lauren Caron, telling her how much I was enjoying a great AirBnB in Avignon. It is my very good fortune that she wrote back with some enthusiastic recommendations and said, in a gentle way that suggested I may be in the wrong town: “I really like Arles.” Say no more, friend. I was headed next for Marseilles where I would spend my last two nights then fly home. But Lauren is right about design and travel so I quickly scanned AirBnB for something charming in Arles and Arles came through. Based on her recommendation, I changed plans. Here’s the AirBnB I found, which I’ll link to at the end of the newsletter, along with additional recommendations for design-y rentals in Arles.

Although it was mid-May, things were heating up in Provence. Finding an AirBnB with a pool is almost impossible in Arles because there just aren’t many. But with luck I found the most amazing newly designed/renovated one-bedroom modern cottage situated over an outdoor pool/lounge/kitchen/courtyard combo. The apartment was located in the La Roquette district, which is a tiny neighborhood in Arles with its own delightful center of gravity, a little plaza with a cafe that is open, from what I could tell, from 7am to very late into the night. Cafe de la Roquette certainly seemed like the beating heart of this tiny district, surrounded by little jasmine-scented pedestrian streets. Every turn in this area delivers another spectacular view of vine-covered townhouses with their handsome shutters and sometimes very glam doors. How does this exist? How is an entire town in on this conspiracy of charm and jasmine? Amazing.