We will be staying in Arles in October. We would like to go to St Remy and Les Baux. We will not have a car. Our goal is to take it slow and soak up the local atmosphere. Two questions: Do each of these towns warrant an entire day or should we do both in one day? And do the buses run in October? I was a little confused when reading about the buses.
Thank you.
Posted by
Florida
1450 posts
Both places are wonderful. You could easily spend a day in S-R by itself, but splitting the day between S-R and Les Baux should be possible and they are only 15 minutes apart. I don't know about the bus schedule, but you really should look into renting a car for a day to do this. EuropCar has a rental location in Arles right next to the train station and the route to Les Baux and S-R is easy. Plus, there are some cute little towns along the way (like Maussane) you'll want to stop at.
Posted by
Sacramento, California U.S.A.
10603 posts
St. Remy is good for a day, but less is doable if that's all the time you have. They have a great Wednesday and Saturday market. Les Baux is small. A partial day works. I'd go early before it's clogged with tour buses. If you do both in one day, save more of the time for St. Remy.
Posted by
Truro, NS, Canada
3941 posts
We visited Les Baux last year in early Oct. We had a car tho - not sure how to do it by public transport. We did the audio tour that you get with entrance and were there about 2 hours walking around the site, then maybe another 30-45 min having a quick lunch and looking in the shops (we had gone the day before, but got there too late in the day to see the ruins, so we did a little looking in the shops then).
I can say it didn't get very busy at Les Baux (we were there Oct 6, which was a Tues) - a lot of the live action demos weren't being done at that time of year, so not sure if it's really necessary to get there super early in Oct.
If you do end up renting a car, and are interested in Roman ruins, we stopped at Glanum on our way back from Les Baux. It's right along the way. We spent about 45 min or so there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glanum The only other people there were some kids on a school outing.
I can't speak for St Remy - I wanted to visit, but our GPS got us so turned around (it kept trying to send us down a one way street the wrong way and didn't recognize construction detours) and it took us awhile to make our way out (we were going thru to our accoms in Salon) that hubby said - I'm not coming back here! LOL
But I would say you could do both in a day if you get started early-ish and the bus schedule works in your favour.
Posted by
English but living in Melbourne, Australia
432 posts
Bus #57 connects Avignon,. St Remy, Les Baux, Mausanne, and Arles several times a day weekends only but only in season.
Posted by
Portland, Maine
2916 posts
St. Remy is easily worth a full day. We spent a week there on 2 different occasions. At least when we were there, I don't remember any bus service to Les Baux. Maybe it was because it was off-season. We took a taxi to Les Baux, spent a couple of hours there, then walked back to St. Remy. I think St. Remy and Les Baux would be difficult to do in one day from Arles w/o a car.
Posted by
1 posts
St. Remy is lovely - we were just there on wed. market day and if you enjoy strolling, shopping, and talking with vendors it's worth several hours. The highlight of Les Baux was the Carriers de Lumieres, an amazing immersive multimedia show in massive limestone quarries - Chagall is featured there through Jan. 2017. the village of Les Baux itself seemed very touristy with the exception of the 12th c. St. Vincent Romanesque church with its brilliant modern stained glass windows. we had a car so both places in a day were easy to do.