May Day, aka Labor Day, a holiday here and in much of the world, but not in North America. May Day celebrates the value of the worker. September Labor Day celebrates the value of work. Is it any surprise that North America does not celebrate May Day?

• We stopped at a bakery for pastries and got a pain au chocolat like the ones we remembered from the past — with a tiny bit of chocolate. The clerk thought C was Italian — a first!
• We ate the pastries at a bar. ("No problem!" according to the cheery proprieter, who it turned out had spent 17 years in Quebec and had become a Canadian citizen. C commented to him that the bar staff in Arles were much friendlier than in Paris, and he replied that it hadn't always been that way, but that the bars were realizing that they should be nicer to tourists. M. Eric of the hotel added that bars have relied more on local patrons than on tourists, so they haven't needed to be particularly nice to tourists.)
• The bar provided a good vantage point to wait and later watch the "guardians," the cowboys of the Camargue (the marshy area south of Arles), and the women dressed in traditional outfits. They paraded, with troupes of pipe and tabor, to the Place du Forum (site of the original Roman Forum) to have a short speech in front of a statue of Frédéric Mistral, a major proponent of traditional Provençal culture and language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Quite a spectacle (but not the one we were trying to get tickets to!). It was also interesting how quickly the plaza was cleaned up (horses, after all...), and returned to its natural state of bar tables and umbrellas. Also hanging out in front of the bar were various local characters, including a woman who complained about nobody singing the Provençal anthem, when even she didn't seem to know all of it. Lots of people, many of them locals, were taking pictures of the colorful costumes and the white horses.
• Arles museum (founded by Mistral) still closed, not surprisingly since it's a holiday. Some stores are open, especially tourist ones, or ones with guardian related merchandise.
• We saw another march, this one by workers/unionists — it is Labor Day after all. There were a few Socialist and Communist banners, and it was odd for us, as Americans, to see the hammer and sickle.
• Back to Les Arènes — finally we got tickets to the spectacle!
• Lunch at the same tourist place as yesterday behind Les Arènes — it was open. Made dinner reservations elsewhere for tonight.
• Back to see a couple Roman ruins, including by accident, a tiny bit of the aqueduct. Not exactly spectacular.
• Back to the hotel and paid, since we're leaving tomorrow before the desk opens. Rain, thunder, read, rested.
• Back to Les Arènes, but the spectacle was cancelled, so we got a refund. So we didn't get to see the acrobatic kind of bullfight, the kind with no killing ("the bulls die of old age") where the bullfighters grab ribbons from the bulls' horns.
• Back to the bar in front of Les Arènes for a couple of pastis. Then we saw a sign for a "kir violette" (=violet kir; kir is cassis and white wine; kir royale is cassis and champagne). The waiter said it had eau de violette, and was typical in Provence, so naturally we did a taste test between the kir violette and the standard kir cassis. The kir violette was oddly familiar, but not something you'd have every day.
• Back to hotel before dinner. Pouring rain after dinner.
• Final Arles restaurant ranking:
  1. La Gueule du Loup
  2. Restaurant au 7 Saveurs
  3. La Paillotte
  4. Lou Caleu
  5. L'Escaladou