I woke up early one morning, set out to spend a day all by myself. That plan came to a crashing halt when I got off the train and on the bus and the nice man from Congo struck up a conversation with me. At least I know a fair amount about Africa, and can name at least two cities in the Congo, so I had something to say, at least. I did, however, start off with my creeper-repellent: pass-along cards. Haha. Even that didn't work, as he'd already heard of the church and some of the teachings... I told him he ought to go to our church sometime. In any case, we ended up spending the entire morning together checking out the Pont du Gard.
This bridge is seriously amazing. Well, aquaduct, I guess. Either way, it's enormous and just incredible. It's been around for like... 2000 years. Yeah. Crazy. I took my new friend Job and I on not only one but two wild-goose-chase-of-a-hike for absolutely no reason. I thought there would be a view eventually, but no. And I realized that I should probably have been smarter than to wander off in the woods with a stranger like that, but no. Luckily he didn't try to kill me or anything! He even bought me a can of pop when we were done. Nice guy. His picture-taking skills left something to be desired, however...
I had to explain that I wanted the bridge in the picture... This one was better.
Kayaking under the bridge? I'll save that for the next time!
This store name made me die laughing. You'd understand if you read French poetry.
And thus began my day of sight-seeing by myself, AKA a whole bunch of pictures with my big head in front of whatever I was looking at. I mostly was just cursing my dumb camera the whole day for being so crappy and having such a small lens. I am getting a new one ASAP, which might not be for a while, but still. Sorry for my big head, but I just hate pictures without anyone in them, and seeing as how I was the only person around, there you go. Reason number 2 to not travel by yourself.
First stop was this Roman arena. I don't think it's quite as big as the one we saw in Arles, but it is the best-preserved Roman arena. Or one of the two best-preserved Roman arenas, I don't remember. Either way, it was cool. The audioguide was pretty good too!
Next stop was lunch. Which I ate at a restaurant, by myself. I remember when I was in Kenya, I went to see the movie Nancy Drew by myself and it was quite liberating. I won't say that I felt the same way in this situation, but it was still nice. I had a great view of this random alligator statue.
Because I got a drink and a dessert, my lunch ended up costing more than all my travel for the whole day. Which is saying something about how cheap my three-hour each way, round trip tickets cost!
Rick suggested this little cookie/cake thing for dessert. It was so cute. And good.
A random pretty door that I liked:
Of course, they have to have a museum dedicated to a certain fabric that got its start in Nimes. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's of Nimes, which in French is de Nimes --> denim. Ring any bells? This museum was basically just one little room, full of really weird pictures and cardboard cutouts.
I think this is the patent for denim. Pretty cool, eh?
What does Abraham Lincoln have to do with denim, I ask you? Cotton, slaves, maybe? No idea.
-Jean jackets are out? How is that possible?
-I just opened the magazine and there it was.
-This is horrible. Who decides these things?
-Marie Claire, apparently.
From there, it was over to La Maison Carrée. The Square House. This was before they had a word for rectangle.
It was so beautiful!
Inside they had this pretty cheesy 3-D film that runs every half an hour. It was like going through history really fast, as this priest guy was inside praying to know who the bravest citizen of Nimes was. Every different time period had a different brave person. My personal favorite was Jean Cavalier, this protestant guy who like invaded some castle or something... obviously I didn't really hold onto the details here, but the funniest part was when he was sword-fighting this other guy and the guy asks, "Monsieur, qui etes vous?" (who are you?) and he responds, "Jean Cavalier, enfant de Dieu" (Jean Cavalier, child of God). I seriously just busted up laughing. It was so funny.
From here, I followed the canal route down the street, past this beautiful fountain (who ever heard of a canal having a fountain?!), and visited...
Les Jardins de la Fontaine.
What's funny is that in New Caledonia, there's a neighborhood with this same name, where some really awesome members lived and where we went tracting ALL the time, so I feel like it's something near and dear to my heart already.
When the city needed to set up their canal system, they went one step farther and turned it into this beautiful park with tons of fountains and statues. This is basically the center of the canal system. Smart thinking, right?
And right next to that is this temple of Diana.
You can see where stone carvers came to get inspiration from this temple in the 1800s, and then they carved their names in the stone. Pretty cool.
By the end of the day, I seriously felt like I was back in Roman times for how filthy my feet were. Not that Roman times is synonymous with dirty feet, but still...
As I was leaving the gardens, I spotted something from afar... the missionaries! And then I followed them, creeper-style, to my next destination. How could I help it that we were walking in the same direction? They weren't as excited to see me as the elders in Aix were. Lame.
This was the end of the line of the Pont du Gard aquaduct. Isn't that crazy?! That huge huge aquaduct, and this is where it all led to. You can see that little archway (now covered up) above that square is where the water would come out, and then it was divided up through those little arches at the bottom to be distributed throughout the city.
On the way back to the train station...
I know there's a story behind the whole alligator/palm tree thing here, but I don't know it and I'm too lazy to look it up. Sorry.
The arena again, this time with the statue of this famous bull-fighter guy.
And you bet there was another creeper on the train ride home who tried to tell me how Islam is superior to all other religions. I almost pulled out my pass-along cards, but I thought it might not be a good idea. Instead, I just countered all his arguments by saying, "Well, I believe that..." and basically it was always the opposite of what he said. I just did this until he got frustrated with me and got up and left. Victoire!
Anyway, Nimes was great. I recommend it!
1 comment:
Gagné!!
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