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.

The Pont Du Gard: The Site and the Large Exhibition by Roselyne Moreaux

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This was an excellent souvenir with many photographs and pictures of the site. The text explains the history and has the facts about the dimensions.



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9 Oct. 2011 Tautavel, Caune de l’Arago, Gorges des Gouleyrous, Narbonne-Plage

Today is a learning day that begins with how to take a shower in this villa. Instructions for the shower come with villa’s guide, and understanding how to use the extra hand-held shower tube still requires a learning curve.

We learn the grocery supermarkets are not opened on Sunday, not even the Carrefours which would be similar to a Walmart superstore. In the village of Armissan, the butcher, baker, and a sundry store are open for only a few hours. We buy a rotisserie-roasted chicken (le poulet), which will be more than enough for two meals. The croissants from the baker are as delicious as you might expect, especially the chocolate chip ones for breakfast. At the sundry store we buy tomatoes and apples. We look for the milk in the refrigerated case and can’t find it. The owner shows its location is in a 6-pack under the shelf on the floor. The milk is sterilized. We refrigerated it before we drank it.

The other thing we learn to buy is diesel fuel for our transport, the Volvo V60. The instruction book for our car is in Spanish since we rented it in Barcelona, and in Espana diesel looks like diesel with accent marks. My French phrase books use the word l’essence which translates as gasoline. In France, the diesel fuel we need is on those three nozzle pumps similar to the ones in USA, and the word is gazole. Gazole costs 1.47 Euros per liter, which is about $8.32/gallon, and premium gasoline costs even more.








We have a lovely countryside drive to the Museum of Prehistory in Tautavel where we can see the skull of a 450,000-year-old human, known as Tautavel Man.

The museum has audio guides which translate the information into English. We enjoy the displays of fossils and the dioramas that spark our imagination.



Tautavel man had some crude tools made from stone; but he did not yet have fire. In this area, there had been elephants, rhinoceros, and giant bears for this was before an Ice Age. During the Ice Age, some of the elephants evolved into woolly mammoths and there were reindeer. A camera was linked to the excavation sites to show the scientists at work in a cave where different layers of sediment show many different periods of human habitation.

After the museum we drive out of town to the parking area of the Caune De L'Arago and Gorges des Gouleyrous which is beside a graveled road in a vineyard field. We enjoy a walk along the beach area of the river.
We did not find trailheads for hikes to higher elevations. A pictograph looked as if rock climbing were allowed. Again my phrasebooks failed me for there was no translation for “grimpe.”
We enjoy today's scenery. My camera can’t do justice to the depth of the walls of the gorge for so much of it is in shadow even this early in the afternoon.


We eat supper at the villa. We return to the beach at Narbonne-Plage for pictures of the moonrise over the Mediterranean Sea. I try to capture the reflection of the moon in the waves and water on the beach.

8 Oct. 2011 Armissan and Grussian, France

We arrive in Barcelona at 7:30 AM local time, which is 1:30 AM back in Ohio. Entry through immigration is easy once we walk through all the long corridors to get there. My passport is stamped!
We pass a currency exchange place where Patrick can exchange dollars for Euros; and later regret we did not stop here and wait in line for the transaction.
Don and I worry more about finding and communicating in Spanish for the rental car. The Spanish I learned while watching cowboy movies and Dora the Explorer. Our focus is on finding the rental car location and completing that transaction. Alamo/Naciones has an English-speaking clerk and the information for our reservation. We decline to add more drivers for an additional 60 Euros/day/driver. We relax a bit because we do not have to take a shuttle; the car is on the bottom floor of the airport parking garage.

We find the correct car, a black Volvo V60 with a diesel engine. Don adjusts the seats and mirrors. The ignition system is different from the LeSabre and Grand Prix we drive. The key is inserted in one place, the start button is separate, and the brake must be engaged before the engine starts. We needed some help from the attendant with the process; but then, we go through this adjustment period no matter from what airport we pick up our newer model and different make rental car.

We hit the road with our Google map directions, and we soon learn those directions are inadequate. I sometimes have trouble with the Google directions in new cities in US when the road I’m on remains the same and Google starts calling it something else. The street names may be correct but the signs are marked differently. I also have trouble interpreting signs that carry too much information for me to process as fast as I need to do.
We follow the signs to Barcelona, and then, with luck, start to follow the Ronda del Litoral because this highway keeps the port and Mediterranean Sea within view on our right side.
Finally, we follow signs to the A-7 to Girona. We figure out the AP7 is the same highway with toll plazas. We can easily follow the continuation of our route out of Spain past Figueres, La Jonquera, and into France where the AP7 becomes the A-9.
We were surprised that we did not have to stop at the French border and show our passports; for once in our travels, we were stopped at the California border and had to declare we had no agricultural items before entering.
These toll roads use more of my Euros than the 17 Euros still in my possession from our last European trip. I am glad Don and I got Euros and the Visa Travel Debit card from AAA before we left home.

The scenery was beautiful on the drive; but we did not see any places to pull off the highway for scenic views and photo opportunities. Later in France, we realize the signs that direct us to Aires de “different location names” are similar to what we would call rest stops. At some others, there are fuel, restaurants, and gift shops. We stop only for the WC as we want to arrive at our villa destination as soon as possible.

We arrive at the villa more than 24 hours after we left Lewisburg. I am exhausted, the kind of exhaustion that makes me feel sick to my stomach and unable to function if I don’t get some sleep immediately. As soon as I claim our bedroom from the five available, I lie down for some sleep while Patrick and Don head to the butcher and bakery shops for the first time. I just need a nap to feel refreshed.

I want to take a walk in the opposite direction from the two shops. The street name is Rue de Terrain des Sportes, and the satellite view from Google maps shows a field that looks like a soccer field. I hope this field might be as busy with games as Lewisburg’s soccer fields on Saturday afternoon in the autumn. We did not see any games being played there. A few children ride their bikes past us. Here are vineyards across the street from the village's sports field and playground, rather like the way Lewisburg's park is across the street from the cornfield.



We walk back toward the shops and turn into a different narrow street that is also paved from building to building. We feel a bit uncomfortable because we are not sure if we are on a street or a private property. Some young boys kick a soccer ball around a fountain with potable water. At a picnic table, a group of adults were eating and drinking. We do not know if this table was for a café or some private gathering.

We are hungry at 4:30 PM, which is before the butcher and baker have their evening hours (5-7 PM, 1700-1900) so we drive to the closest seaside towns, Gruissan and Narbonne-Plage, to look for restaurants. We find closed restaurants. Many restaurants shuttered their businesses at the end of tourist season. The others will be open for their dinner service at 1930, 7:30 PM.


We return to Armissan to buy our evening meal from the butcher and baker. We buy roast pork slices to make sandwiches and pizza slices from his deli section. From the baker we buy slices of lemon-crème filled cake for our dessert.
There is internet access at the villa so we can use Don’s computer, which he brought to upload his photographs, to check our emails for messages. I sent an international text and received a stateside reply, just to make sure my Mobal phone worked.

Then we sleep until the windstorm wakes some of us. We shutter the windows that were making the most noise. I wake again at midnight after 3 hours of good sleep, and I feel good. The moon is full, and its light makes a beautiful landscape, even with a lot of wind. I write for three hours until I am ready to return to bed.

Click Armissan and Grussian, France for more photos of this day.

Hunt at the Well of Eternity by Gabriel Hunt

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book is for fun and entertainment for readers who like adventure stories. It can be recommended to a YA reader or for any reader who prefers PG-rated stories. It was fun to read on a long airplane ride.



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Vacation in France 7 Oct. 2011 Travel Day

Don and I are awake by 6:15 A.M. to be ready to leave for Camden with enough time to talk to Mom and Dad before we leave at 8 A.M. with Patrick for CVG. We park at Fast Park between rows 13 and 14. Thirteen is our lucky number 13, so even if I forget to write it on the ticket I might still remember in nine days where we parked. Check-in procedures go smoother than Don expects. Yesterday, he was frustrated by American Airlines website in his attempts to print the boarding passes. The agent had to do one extra step: swipe the information strip for Don’s passport. The boarding passes print correctly. We are ready for boarding before 10AM, and departure time is 12:30PM.

During a two-hour wait, I would prefer to listen to an audio-book while I people watch. Patrick wants to talk so we listen.

When we arrive at JFK, we have enough time for a good meal. I eat a portabella vegetarian sandwich with a side salad, and drink a glass of Reisling wine. Don and Patrick eat well-made cheeseburgers and fries. They wait until we are on the plane to drink wine.

Patrick needs to be on one-side of the 3-seat middle and me on the other. I cross to the same aisle. Next time I’ll go the opposite way of Patrick’s choice and loading won’t be so difficult for the three of us. For the first time in a long time, this airline offered Don and me their vegan meal option we requested through the Expedia booking. We ate chick peas in a spicy curry with rice and broccoli, salad and honeydew melon slices while everybody else had a choice of chicken or pasta entrée. Ours looked more colorful and fresh. I read most of Hunt at the Well of Eternity, and I sleep when I can. During our 7-hour plus going through 6 time zones flight the in-flight movies have no audio. The second movie is True Grit, and the cinematography conveys much of the story and mood without the dialogue.

Naughty in Nice by Rhys Bowen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is an entertaining book that fans of the series will enjoy. It does not get the fifth star for I won't re-read it. It gets the fourth star for a new reader might find this entertaining enough to start the series here.



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