10 Oct. 2011, Pont du Gard and Nimes

Yes, it is a bit of a culture shock to find the open-hole toilet at the rest area; enough of a culture shock that I return to the car for my camera. It is a good thing hiking in the woods gave me some practice to keep my clothes out of the way!

Pont du Gard is outstanding and impressive. The construction of this Roman aqueduct, which took water to Nimes, began in the year 50. Its height of 48,77 meters (160 feet) makes it the highest Roman aqueduct.
The foundations of the pillars are pointed in shape, like the tip of the prow of a ship to face the current without resistance. The first and second levels feature six and eleven superimposed arches whose span varies from 15.5 meters to 24.5 meters (50-80 feet). The third level has 35 arches with a span of 4.8 meters (15 feet.)


I take panoramic shots in my attempts to convey the grandeur of this bridge built with large blocks with dry joints.
I take some pictures with Patrick at the base for human scale.
Plus, I’m always looking for the small things nearby, like the Nautilus shell and wildflowers.
There is a nice museum, gift shops, snack food cafeteria, and toilets that were familiar enough I did not have to take pictures of them.

We drive to Nimes to see more Roman ruins but modern-day city traffic confounds us. We get stuck in lanes while Don stays with traffic flow. Traffic has us going in circles in the roundabouts until we find our safe exits to Les Arenes. Street parking is too tight, and sometimes we are not sure what is a public parking spot. We find an underground parking lot whose spaces are tight enough that opening the doors are difficult. Don backs out and finds a spot to which our car is better suited.

I do not know the name of the fountain but it is pretty and it is outside the parking garage in a park area.

We stop at an outdoor cafe to settle our post-driving-in-Nimes-nerves

with a glass of wine for each and a quatre fromage pizza to share. I eat the pieces with the weird-looking cheese on top.
We look around for a street sign to get our bearings. Don notices Les Arenes is across the intersection on the western corner of the street. Patrick buys our admission and rents the English-speaking audio guides. Les Arenes is the best preserved in the Roman Empire.
We have the time to tour it completely and to take as many photos as we like. We miss the staged fighting of the gladiators. We see four actors train to use the trident and net.

We did not have time to go to additional museums or sites for they closed by 6PM.

The payment process is different from the parking garages in Ohio. We take the entry ticket with us When we are ready to leave, a vending-style machine is located at the bottom of the stairway. Place the entry ticket in the appropriate slot of this machine and the fee (9 Euros) is displayed. Deposit currency; and a receipt pops out. When our car is ready to exit the multiple- floor garage, the receipt is entered into a gate machine and the bar raises to allow our exit. We make our way back to Autoroute 9. The drive on Autoroute 9 takes us back to the town of Narbonne for the Carrefour supermarket.

Shopping at the Carrefour is stressful for me. While it has the appearance of being similar to Walmart or Kroger superstores there are many things different than the language of the signs. We know we have to bring our own basket to hold our purchases.
Produce is weighed in the department on a scale with a touch-screen, which shows a variety of items with unit prices in Euros/kilogramme.
Seafood is displayed in an area similar to produce with its own touch-screen scales and a pronounced fishy odor.
In the meat case, we see large cuts of cheval (horse.)
We search for the French version of Stouffer’s frozen entrees to microwave for our supper, and we did not find them. In a refrigerated case, we find some sealed packages that look like those old-style Boil-in-a Bag entrees, and there might be micro-wave cooking instructions on the package. Don almost selected one that I encouraged him not to take, for I know that lapin translates as rabbit. He buys osco bocco avec veau; that is veal. Patrick gets lasagna ala Bolognese, and I have shells with ricotta and espinard (spinach). The bakery special displays make the selection of strawberry tarts for desserts easier.
Checkout is easy for my Visa Travel card works like a credit card here. I just have to sign the receipt instead of using my PIN code.

I have a bone to pick with the phrase guides I chose to bring. Not only do they not have diesel=gazole, they don’t have all the words in the cooking instructions on these packages. Do we remove the entrée from the plastic before micro-cooking? If we leave the plastic overleaf on it, do we pierce it to vent it? We guess and the food is good.