Wandering the city of Arles, France, near the mouth of the Rhône, we keep seeing posters for the Fête du Riz (festival of the rice), featuring the 22eme Ambassadrice du Riz, Maëlys Carlotti, on horseback, holding a corsage of rice blossoms. She’s adorable:
Yesterday, Gray and I took a rental car to Camargue, the marshy delta where the Rhône meets the Mediterranean. We saw tall rice plants growing in and around the small villages. More on that trip to follow.
Back in Arles, returning from our dinner in the old city, we heard New Orleans jazz coming from across the river. We figured we’d walk over the bridge to hear the band close up, but the music came to us. The band was aboard a decorated wagon being drawn over the bridge by a farm tractor.
Behind the float were three women on horseback:
In the lead was Maëlys Carlotti, le Ambassadrice du Riz herself on her beautiful white horse!
Her entourage gave us a pack of organic brown rice from Camargue, where we’d been earlier in the day.
You’d imagine rice would be on the menu in all the fine restaurants of Arles. Au contraire. Rice noodles at a Vietnamese restaurant were as close to rice as we’d come until now. This being the 42nd rice festival, rice must be an impossible sell to the wheat-loving French.
But the magic was not over. Floats were lined up across the river to pass over the bridge and into the city, each with its own music and theme, and each followed by an entourage of costumed adults and kids, on foot. Here’s a sample:
A dozen floats in all rolled past, each with a team of marchers trailing behind on foot. Then we were treated to a parade of old tractors, some real antiques.
This was the last one.
C’est finis.
p.s. I finally found a Senegalese restaurant that serves a rice dish, on Sunday nights only.
Eye of the Cormorant 
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