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Day 1 Toulouse -
Day 2 Toulouse -
Day 3 Toulouse -
Day 4 Argelliers -
Day 5 Argelliers; Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert -
Day 6 Argelliers; Montpellier -
Day 7 Argelliers; Grotte Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc -
Day 8 Argelliers; Nîmes -
Day 9 Argelliers -
Day 10 Argelliers; Béziers -
Day 11 Lansargues -
Day 12 Lansargues; Camargue -
Day 13 Lansargues; Camargue; Aigues-Mortes -
Day 14 Montrozier -
Day 15 Montrozier -
Day 16 Montrozier -
Day 17 Montrozier; Micropolis; Roquefort -
Day 18 Ambeyrac -
Day 19 Ambeyrac -
Day 20 Ambeyrac; Pech Merle; Cahors -
Day 21 Ambeyrac; Foissac -
Day 22 Toulouse -
Day 23 Toulouse -
Day 24 Toulouse; La Grotte de Niaux; Tarascon-sur-Ariège; Foix -
Day 25 Toulouse; Musée des Augustins -
Day 26 Toulouse; Musée Aeroscopia -
Day 27 Toulouse -
Day 28 Freising, Germany
Day 8 — Argelliers; Nîmes Airbnb Rental — 3 Rue de l’Ancienne Église, Argelliers, Languedoc-Roussillon Midi-Pyrénées map
Nîmes, France
We visited the ancient city of Nîmes. The weather fully cooperated. On first arriving, we fortified ourselves with lunch before going to explore.
Afterwards, Timothy said that he felt a bit sluggish.
The original settlement was built by the Gauls and was later taken over by the Romans at the time of Emperor Augustus. There is a temple to Augustus’s godliness in the center of the city.
We know that it was a temple dedicated to Augustus because some guy in the 1700s managed to decipher the message at the top of the portcullis from the holes left in the rock by the chiseled off letters! The guy must have an honorary membership in the NSA—see the top for the sequence of holes.
Yes I have a tons of photos of my men’s backs. They all yell at me for taking their photos. Even when Christopher agrees to pose, the boys refuse.
Nîmes also has the best preserved coliseum, and it’s still in use.
They are setting up for a bullfight.
They have been restoring the ancient building. There’s quite a difference before and after.
After, we went to a nice coffee shop across the street. The nature of the entertainment featured now at the coliseum is showcased on every wall. Nick said that bullfights are the closest to a gladiatorial show they could have picked. I think something less bloody would have been a better choice.
From the coliseum, we went to the center of Nîmes, to the great fountain.
On the map, it showed the temple of Diana just behind the fountain. In person, it was 300 feet up! You can’t see it from the image above, but it was a significant hike. Christopher refused to climb the hill. Instead, he sat in the park and read his book, while an accordionist played french tunes to which little children danced. He thinks he had the best of it.
The boys went with me to the temple on top of the hill. Made it!
Once there, it was 145 steps to get to the top of the structure. The museum guide working inside the tower said that he had a man hop to the top on one foot and another old man made it there with an oxygen tank strapped to his back. I only had a crutch. We went for it!
Unfortunately, the structure on the hill was not the temple of Diana. It turned out to be the remnants of the tower and city wall built by the Gauls. The museum guide said that the temple was just behind the fountain…like the map said. We climbed all the way down, and Christopher joined us there. He had been sitting next to it the whole time.
The Temple of Diana
That’s my photo of Nick taking a photo of Christopher taking a photo of Tim!
We made the decision to drive another twelve miles to see the ancient Roman aqueduct. But it was already quite late in the day. By the time we got there, it appeared closed, although the gate had not been locked yet for the night. We parked our car illegally in some nearby camping site and hiked in to try to get a glimpse of it.
Tim ran off. We did the responsible thing and went back to get our car. Tim wasn’t back there. We all were angry. When we finally reunited, Tim said that he thought we “figured it out” and moved the car into the closed parking lot anyway because it wasn’t really closed only the museum was closed. We said that once he ran off, we had no choice but to wait for him back where he knew the car was parked. It was ugly. Tim got all the way to the structure, while we all screamed at him via text from the car.
Timothy’s Photo of the Aquaduct
On the way home, we drove on A9—a paid highway. Unfortunately, it was too new for our GPS to recognize it; it kept screaming at us that we were driving on unpaved roads at an unsafe speed. There were also no exits where the GPS advised us to exit. We drove 20 kilometers further down the road before we were able to exit the highway. We returned on small bucolic roads—only it was dark—and we didn’t get home until midnight.
All is well.
Love from France!