89 - Jaded John: Au-delà du dôme du tonnerre

Monday, June 24

Turns out the breakfast at my hotel was extremely generous: drinks à volonté, cheese, yogurt, and a basket of baked goods per person (half a baguette, a croissant, and a chocolatine)! Since my luggage hadn't arrived last night, I took my time with breakfast waiting to hear something from the delivery company. But afterwards I gave a call to Air France to establish that I had places to be and that if my bags were delivered in the next two hours, I could come to the airport to grab them. I had just checked out and was beginning to wander Montpellier again when I got a call back to say my bags were waiting for me at the airport.

A pannier of baked goods a day keeps the weight loss away 😅

Revisiting la place de la comédie again; it felt a little more alive this morning compared to yesterday afternoon

Part of me wishes I'd just asked to have the stuff sent home but it'll be good to swap shoes out. It took 15 minutes at the airport but I managed to get everything tetrised/squished into the trunk. With all mes affaires, it was time to begin the day! First stop, Nîmes!

Comme une gante!

I arrived in Nîmes around 11:30, it's not a far drive from Montpellier; the car didn't even register a loss in gas level. I took a moment to admire the Arena before walking around it to the Office of Tourism. Armed with a map and a reminder about the closing time, I headed to les Halles to pick up a market lunch. Enroute, I walked through the cute stone streets of the historic city; I was surprised at how many minor plazas the layout created but it made for a very pleasant walk.

I'm wondering if this is the personification of the city? It could explain wearing buildings as a hat.

The arena dominates this area; it's surprisingly well preserved.

One of the many little plazas scattered around old town Nîmes, the streets and plazas were alive with people today.

Les Halles at Nîmes were in a newer building and were in the process of closing for the day. It seems this market is more oriented towards groceries and prepared foods than serving food.

Picnic lunch acquired!

Picnic spot acquired!

Lunch was a brandade (apparently a classic Nîmes dish, but could only have been classic since the discovery of codfish), a wheel of unnamed local cheese, and apricot.

Lunch complète, I made my way to the Arena via a roundabout path, basically following the border of the ancient city.

Port Augustus; apparently Emperor Augustus himself put up money for the walls of Nîmes to be built since the city was of such importance to the Roman presence in the region.

Plenty of construction going on near the museum of "Romanity", the museum's garden includes some ruins but I was just passing through.

My tour of the perimeter complete, it was time to enter the Arena. The place is pretty much open, with some corridors cordoned off for seemingly no reason. The audio guide is only via one's phone, a concept that worked pretty well so long as one has the data to stream sound clips. I feel I learned a lot and I wonder if, having seen the Arena of Nîmes, I can skip the Colosseum of Rome 😅

The audio guide was good and covered a lot about both the arena of Nîmes' use, history, fate, as well as details about gladiators and Roman culture. Apparently "arenes" comes from the Latin word for sand? Additionally, a circus would have been for chariot racing while naval battle could be emulated in an amphitheater during the naumachiae.

There was a neat set of panels illustrating the various forms/characters the gladiators came in; their weapons and armor were meant to be approximately balanced and only certain types fought each other i.e. provocators could fight each other but the retairius was matched against the secutor. The total list of gladiators I learned of: le provocator, le thrace, l' hoplomaque, le mirmillon, le rétiare, le secutor, et l'arbelas.

As the Roman empire began to decline, the gladiatorial profession disappeared, replaced by the slave fights I typically associated with the arena. And eventually the games in general went away as it distracted people from more pious pursuits.

At one point, the arena became a lived in district of the city and was even fortified. This walled up arcade is all that's left of those days; per the guide, extensive efforts were taken to preserve the arena and demolish the housing inside over a hundred years ago.

From the arena I can spot the Magne tower that served as the outer extremity of the Roman ramparts that once enclosed ancient Nîmes.

Per the guide, games started as a funerary tradition in Rome but gained popularity; no need to wait for some rich family member to kick the bucket to have a good time, right? When in use, the arena was an all day affair: fights and hunting of forest animals in the morning, execution of prisoners (via feeding / forced fighting the animals) in the afternoon, and gladiatorial combat to finish the day out.

It was hot out in the open arena; it's a shame the wooden poles and canvas that would have shaded the place hadn't survived.

Nîmes was a Roman colony situated along the Via Domitia; per the guide, the Hellenised Gauls living in Nîmes preferred the Roman way of doing things than their neighbors and essentially became a vassal state. And eventually an emperor with direct ties to the city would come to power: Antoninus Pius

I suppose it's pretty incredible that this arena has remained so well preserved; I wonder what it'd be like filled to the brim with spectators back in the or what it looked like as a lived in district.

From the Arena, I made my way north to the Maison Carée, which was discovered to be a temple dedicated to the Imperial Cult, the merging of the Caesar's political role with divine right. Inside was a small museum about the architecture, how it used to be a forum too, the Imperial Cult, and the Roman colonization/absorption of Gallic "Nemezus" into the Roman empire.

It's weird they called it the square house, it's clearly a rectangle. Raised up, it appears that this stone building was once a central item to a public forum.

A lot of work has been put into renovating and preserving the Maison Carée; inside the museum they showed a few of the capitals that had been replaced. The exterior looks nice, inside the building is a fairly plain stone room now to house a small museum.

I hadn't heard of the Imperial Cult before so the exhibit was interesting. I guess as the Roman empire grew in size, linking the emperor's political position with that of divine favor by the gods was pushed to help unify the diverse population and territories. This August guy must've quite the human specimen to inspire all of this.

From Maison Carrée, it was a hop, skip, and a jump to the gardens. There, a decrepit and ancient temple of Dianne was built next to the natural spring that gave rise to Nîmes. The spring was given a Gallic deity named Nemeze from which latinization yielded the current name of Nîmes. The spring would much later help to fuel the textile industry in Nîmes; in antiquity, this water was sent via aqueducs to support the surrounding area.

Interestingly, the symbol for Nîmes is a crocodile chained to a palm tree, which was the image minted on Roman coins to commemorate the conquest of Egypt.

I was surprised to see little fish hanging out in this little bit of water just before the drain; further upstream, there were plenty of fish in the deeper basins.

Plenty of people out playing petanque/bocci today

The perils of looking intimidating: I think the scolie des jardins was close to be a victim of its own success.

The gardens seemed to have been designed to emphasize the water features; it made everything feel open and the layout was interesting due to areas being connected by narrow connections traversing the water

Not to mention the water parts got quite fancy themselves

The temple of Diane; it felt like I was walking into an Indiana Jones movie scene.

It's an impressively large vaulted ceiling to have been constructed out of stone

I'm guessing this is the spring that gave life to Nîmes; the bubbles were coming up in a seemingly circular pattern so I'm thinking the source has been fitted with some modern equipment.

Oh, turns out the source of this spring is a cave network spanning kilometers!

This spot on the hill felt like it was directly taken from Park Guell in Barcelona 😂

I'd asked the office of tourism about if what'd I'd heard years ago was true: that denim jeans take their name from "de Nîmes". This pamphlet was basically all they had on the subject. "In the 17th century, Nîmes became a reputable manufacturer of curtains and silk, working with a variety of raw materials in a time of change. Serge de Nîmes was developed by using blue string for the vertical and undyed string for the horizontal yielding an economic and durable cloth. Levi Strauss popularized the material he discovered in lot 501 of cloth samples as he sought to make durable clothes for miners.

Up the hill from the spring was the Tour Magne. Once a Gallic tower, likely erected to defend the spring, the Romans built a tour to engulf the Gallic one and integrated it into the walls that defined the ancient city's boundaries. But what remains is a fraction of the true tower. The exhibit inside the tower was about how a Nîmes born noble wasted his whole fortune digging up and destroying the tower and surrounding area in search of treasure based on a prophecy by Nostradamus. The audio-guide (again phone based) featured a 5 minute story followed by a question, whose answer one should record on the paper slip to submit into the monthly drawing for a souvenir. The question: was the treasure he sought in the shape of a goat or an ox. Based on what I'd heard from the audio clip, I answered goat, but also added that "le vrai trésor était les amis qu'on a trouvé" (the real treasure was the friends we made along the way).

Once built into the enceinte (perimeter wall), the tower was accessible via a no-longer existent ramp.

The excavation/searching within the tower damaged the tower such that a giant central pillar was needed to stabilize it. The spiral stairs traversing the tower were fairly narrow, it was a bit tricky to squeeze against the railing to let someone pass by in the opposite direction.

The tower also featured a nice view of the surrounding area. Can you spot the Arena from here?

Faaaaar to the right, one could just make out the very tip of Pic Saint Loup.

It was time to say goodbye to Nîmes, but not before taking a breather to enjoy apricot sorbet. It was a hot one today, 30C and sunny, so it was good to take a moment to reenergize and rehydrate in the cool shade.

Getting a bit of water for the trek down the hill; this dog had the right idea of how to cool off.

Looks like they're building another aqueduct! Think they have enough planks on that joint?

I don't know why the spoon was a shovel, but this little treat near the Arena really hit the spot

I came, I saw, I had ice cream

Next stop, Pont du Gard. I've visited Pont du Gard many, many years ago as part of my high school French/Spanish club trip (this won't be the last time you hear this line). I recall it being an impressive aqueduct/bridge spanning a river but the details were fuzzy in my memory. Since it was only 30 minutes away, I made the trip out to it.

I approached the bridge from what they called the right bank, it was interesting to turn the corner and suddenly be faced with this feat of Roman engineering

It's an aqueduct crossing the Gard river, so the aqueduct is located at the to. From this side, there's also a pedestrian bridge to cross the river; the other side has a museum about the bridge and Roman history.

I'd read online that a light show is often projected onto the face of the bridge in the evening, that must be quite the sight. Though the big arches don't seem particularly conducive to reflecting light.

I noticed a few of these butterflies fluttering about but wasn't quick enough on the shutter to get the wings open.

Many people were relaxing in the river, some families had brought picnics and spent the afternoon swimming. I spent the day walking about in boots more suited to spring/autumn so I relished the opportunity to give my feet a quick soak.

With the hour getting later, things were quieting down but the bridge remained majestic.

The valley around the Gard river was a lush green. I wonder how far up the river on would need to go to find the next town?

Showing a bit of wear on some of the stones.

I took a moment to say hi to some of the locals

While going up the steps to see the top of the aqueduct, I was engaged in a conversation by a few kids (I'm guessing high schoolers or newly grad) but we had a nice conversation as they put on their shoes.

Sadly, no access to the canal from this side but I could clearly see the stone slabs layed across the top to cover the canal.

There was a creepy tunnel here to cut through the stone that the canal actually went around.

On the other side of the tunnel, I was rewarded with a junction of hiking trails that either follow or operate perpendicular to the aqueduct.

A closer look at the upper stages of the aqueduct

On the left bank, I could have paid to see/walk along the canal via this staircase. But alas, it was past closing so I'll just have to settle for what I've seen.

Adieu, le pont du Gard!

Having refreshed my memory, I made my way to my final destination for the night: Avignon. Again, a place visited in high school but only vague memories. I arrived at sunset; managed to drop the bags off at the hotel before parking near the Palais des Papes and catching the sunset over the Rhone.

Looks like I made it into town just in time for the sunset; I lucked out in dropping the bags and then finding a parking spot close to the papal palace