May 11, 2008

We had planned a two day stay in Nimes as there were a number of interesting sites around this area, so today we left early and went in a big triangle, sort of, around Nimes. We started off with the ruins at Montmajour, but when we arrived, we felt that their entry fee was a little steep for what we expected to see. I took some pictures from outside, and we carried on.

Our next stop was the Chateau des Baux, built on the cliffs above the Provence valley. It was quite a magnificent sight, and we spent over three hours wandering around. We met a couple from Edmonton, who were over visiting relatives in Normandy, and decided to take a side trip??? of a few days to visit in the south. We saw a demonstration of the dreaded Trebucher. It was incredible to watch how far it can shoot a water bomb, but it takes about 1/2 hour to reload. The audioguide we had, explained that in the medieval times, it actually took about 2 hours to reload! I'm guessing they could do some serious damage when they used large rocks rather than water filled plastic balls.

The view from on top was magnificent. The Provence valley was spread out below us, with the patchwork of Olive trees and vineyards. It's easy to imagine the difficulty aggressors would have in attacking this mountaintop chateau. It was interesting to see how the people of that time managed to incorporate their buildings into the rock face of the mountain. We could see the walls clearly in a number of spots and the rooms they cut out of the rock, although primitive for this century, were probably quite posh for back then.





Next we headed northward to Avignon, but by this time it was mid-afternoon, and the crowds were quite thick. Also the clouds rolled in and it started raining. We saw some beautiful countryside, and of course, many fine buildings, but we didn't feel like wandering through any more.



We did make a point to find this one bridge, actually an aqueduct, that Jan saw in a book, or National Geographic, or something. Unfortunately, when we arrived, the place was crawling with cars, busses and bikes, and no parking anywhere, except the lot....at 5.oo Euro! So after driving around for a while, I dropped Jan off at the closest place to the entrance and told her I'd be back to pick her up, after she took a few pictures. On my way back out, I found a parking spot on the sidewalk, when another car pulled out just as I got there. So I walked back to find Jan, and found out that they wanted 9.00 Euro more just for going to see the aqueduct, and 3.00 Euro to use the toilet! For two of us that would have been 24.00 Euro, plus the 5 for parking, and the next available tour didn't start for another 1/2 hour.. Needless to say, we left. As we were driving back to Nimes, we saw more signs for the aqueduct, on the other side of the river, and naively, we thought we would just go and take a quick picture....well, not likely, that side of the river was just as built up and commercialized as the first. We couldn't even get a glimpse of it without paying to get in. hehehehehe

So it was back on the road, and back to the hotel. We're resting up for tomorrow, when we should be heading towards Cannes, or Monaco....not sure how far we can actually get. I did see some nice bikes today, and wanted to share a couple of pictures. I'll have many more when we return, We're up to 3369 pictures so far!



I especially liked the colors on the last one!!! You sure wouldn't miss that bike in a crowd of bikes!!