Jun 26, 2010 - Pont du Gard

Day 6 – The next day I decided (that since it was so hot) we would drive out to see the Pont du Gard. It was a short 45 minute ride to this famous aqueduct. It was built in 19 BC and is the best preserved one in the world .It was built in It delivered water to Nimes and traveled 12 miles via 30 miles of channels .It is in a nice park- like setting with a Roman plumbing museum and concession area. Also there are 2 restaurants with terraces with nice views. .I had been desperate to kayak but the deal was 3 hours long and Greg said he didn’t...

Jun 25, 2010 - Nimes

The day started out with breakfast in the garden. Ike made a fruit salad and pancakes with long skinny sausages. Birds were chirping, it was cool and we had the company of the 2 afghans. There were 4 other couples. The first couple was from North Carolina and had just taken their daughter to Paris to a ballet school. She pronounced. paella ( Pie –el-la) and wore diamonds and he was very southern. Another were young yuppies with big jobs and a rented BMW convertible .She wore a sequined top. The third was an Israeli and his wife from who...

Sep 21, 2009 - Nimes, France

Nimes, France is clearly a city suffering from an identity crisis. Its claims to fame are denim (yes, invented in Nimes, not America), Roman ruins (among the best preserved in Europe) and Spanish bullfighting (yes, in France). It was the bullfighting that drew us there. Neither of us had ever seen a bullfight and we somehow managed to miss every opportunity in Spain and Portugal! But as we were planning our time in southern France, we discovered that Nimes, a small city in southern France, has a huge festival with Spanish-style...

Jun 24, 2008 - France (Pont du Gard to Millau)

International Camping Ground, Pont du Gard - Millau Camp Ground, Millau, France. Left the camping ground at around 9ish and drove the short distance to the Roman Aquaduct. This was a sight to see. Here we were looking at structure that had been built 15 years BC. Although it had been renovated by Napoleon the III in the 1800s this hardly took anything from the experience. The aquaduct is massive and towers over us as we walked over the attached bridge (add much later and only a relatively recent two hundred years ago). Rowena and I...

Jun 12, 2008 - St Cannat - Day Three

Today saw a leisurely start for all three of us. We left the house around 10.15am with the intent of driving to Nîmes, then to Pont du Gard, and then back through Avignon. After 70 minutes we arrived in Nîmes and managed to find an underground carpark close to the centre of the old city. Within minutes of surfacing we were admiring the Ampitheatre – while smaller than the Colosseum in Rome, this is the best preserved of all existing Roman ampitheatres. We walked around the arena with a hand-held audio commentary system and learned a lot...

Oct 19, 2007 - Nimes here we come

We go to collect our 'wheels' for 3 months only to discover that the car hire place is not actually at the airport but right beside the hotel we are staying in. We do have a plan - to drive through Southern France and head towards Toulouse. Lester wants to check out the Airbus factory. It takes us 4 days, as we keep finding these amazing sights. After missing a turnoff we end up at a place called Nimes (pronounced Nim). At 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon we are in this huge city. We are following signs to the Information Centre and end up...