Today was a rest day.
I use the term “rest day” loosely, because there is really no such thing as a rest day – we have to pack in as much as possible every day.
But today – Friday – we had nothing specifically planned, so we loosely proposed to do a bit of a drive around Nîmes.
If you do a Google search (or ask ChatGPT – my new best friend) for the top 5 things to do around Nîmes, it struggles to narrow it down to just 5. There is so much history – ancient history – around here, and so much to see.
So we decided on a day seeing ruins. Which is funny really, because MBW gets to see a ruin every morning when I get out of bed, especially that I am now retired.
We made a loose arrangement to do a loop from home (Nîmes), to Uzès which is a well-preserved medieval township, then on to the Pont du Gard then to Avignon, and then home.
A nice relaxing drive in the country.
I know that I keep banging on about how different it is to drive here in France, but it is completely unlike anything I have ever experienced.
There is no logic to the streets, or the way that they are laid out.
Although if you can imagine the buildings and streets 500 years ago or more, it probably does make sense. There is no “planning” for where houses have been built – they just popped up anywhere, and the tracks between houses have – in time – become roads.
Roads that are often unsuitable for vehicles.
You don’t see any Landcruisers here, and the only “big” car we saw was in Dijon, and that was in the yard of an apartment complex that was supposed to be where the parliamentarians live.
It was a Bentley, and I don’t know how they get that thing around the streets without getting it scratched. You certainly couldn’t take it into underground carparks!
The drive from home to Nîmes is only about 25km, so it shouldn’t take long. Right?
The first challenge of the day was to find Claude. We parked him in the (provided) underground parking garage nearby. That was a major criteria for everywhere we stayed – it had to have free parking available.
Trying to find street parking for Claude would have been a nightmare, and would have resulted either in divorce or one of us coming home in a box in the cargo hold of the aircraft – neither of which would have been a suitable outcome for any future holidays that we planned.
MBW has a super-power that I have never fully appreciated. It is said (not by me, but I’ve heard it said) that women make bad navigators, but MBW has an amazing sense of direction.
We set out to find Claude, and I was quietly fuming because we were clearly heading in the wrong direction, and then suddenly we popped out of a side street onto a more major road, and the entrance to the carpark was just across the street.
Go figure.
This particular road was two lanes each way, with a very wide (10m wide) median strip that had fountains and greenery … and as luck woulkd have it, it had an open air market in progress.
I actually think that MBW’s “sense of direction” was not so much for the carpark, but for the markets and they just happened to be in the same place 🙂
So we did a quick browse of the markets. They sell the most random collection of stuff including antiques (including a grandfather clock!), second-hand homewares (like a thrift shop), fresh meat and seafood, bakery items, etc.
We found this little patisserie stand that had these things (see photo below) that MBW had always wanted to try. It looked and tasted a bit like an almond croissant, but was more bready and less sweet.
Hard to describe. But tasty.
Editor’s note: MBW tells me it is called a sacristain.
The markets went on forever, so we abandoned that and went in search of Claude again.
Now this was the challenge. We found the entry to the carpark where cars go in, but we couldn’t for the life of us find the door and stairway where you walked into the carpark. No point asking me for my opinion, because I still thought that the carpark was in a totally different direction.
MBW had put a pin in Google Maps when we dropped Claude off, and funnily enough, the pin took us straight to the doorway and staircase, brilliantly disguised as a plain, unmarked door that would have made Maxwell Smart proud.
Out onto the street and we pointed Claude’s nose towards Uzès. The road out of Nimes towards Uzès was marked as though it was a “D” road.
As best as I can figure, here in France “A” roads are toll roads (or at least, major highways where you can sit at 130km/h all day). “N” roads are national highways (that’s what the “N” stands for…) where you can often do 80-90km/h, but you are constantly speeding up and slowing down for roundabouts and townships. And thet have a lot of traffic on them – fellow cheapskates like us who prefer not to pay tolls.
But townships have boulangeries, and we like boulangeries.
And then you have the “D” roads that are the tertiary roads that are often windy, narrow and prone to lots of traffic and little progress. Joséphine’s instructions on “D” roads are typically “.. in 900m, turn right, take the third exit from the roundabout, travel for 1.1km then take the left lane and take the 1st exit of the roundabout. Travel 500m and …”
You get the idea.
And after that are the surface roads that are – at best – goat tracks 🙂
I know that I have spoken about the roads (and drivers) previously, and I am genuinely not complaining, but they are just so different to driving in Australia.
Our streets are kind of laid out in some pattern, but the streets here just go everywhere. No straight lines, just twists and turns.
And it feels like you are constantly swerving around houses and buildings that just sprang up and now can’t be moved.
Plus there are many streets where the passage is just too narrow for two cars, so you get a sign with a big black arrow pointing one direction (that is the priority vehicle that has right of way), and a smaller red arrow pointing the opposite direction (which is the vehicle that has to give way).
Google Maps selected the best route to Uzès which was a pleasant, scenic drive, but very windy and slow. Which I guess explains why a trip of 25km is often listed with an expected duration of an hour.
Nothing really to report about the trip to Uzès, except to say that one minute you are driving through narrow, suburban streets, and the next thing you are driving through the countryside. Rolling green hills, grapevines, medieval villages, beautiful old bridges.
Once we got out of Nîmes it was a pretty drive.
One of the most frustrating things for me here is that there is often nowhere to stop at the side of the road and take a photo. We crossed a beautiful old bridge, but we simply could not find anywhere even remotely close to stop for a photo, so we had to keep going.
We got to Uzès and did a couple of laps of the city, but traffic and parking was a nightmare. Why don’t these people have jobs? So we decided to try to park outside of the village a little, and walk back.
There were a few wrong turns – maybe my fault, maybe MBW’s, probably Joséphine being indecisive.
I mentioned that there is often nowhere to park for a photo. The bigger curse is that when you find yourself on the wrong road, even if you can find somewhere to stop, it is almost impossible to turn around and go back.
My French is getting better. I’ve learned to look for the word “gratuit” (free), so when you see a sign that says “parking gratuit” (free parking), you jump at it. Into the parking lot about 5 minutes walk out of Uzès, locked up Claude, and we headed off walking.
Now I’m going to digress for a moment.
Being caravaners ourselves, one thing that we are always on the lookout for when we travel is other caravans on the road. And we have hardly seen any. From Paris down to Lyon, I could probably count on one hand how many we have seen.
But now that we are getting further south, we are starting to see a few more. Not like travelling in rural Queensland when you can see 100+ caravans travelling the other way in a day; here we might see two or three.
But in the free carpark outside of Uzès, there were a couple of dozen campers (like Winnebagos). Clearly that seemed like a good (free) place to camp for a few nights, because we have seen very few caravan parks.
Uzès is yet another interesting medieval town. It’s in beautiful condition with a small central market square, and – like all of the others we have seen – it feels like you are stepping back in time.
Also like most other small townships that we have been through, public toilets are non-existant, but we bought coffee that earned us the right to use the facilities at a cafe.
From Uzès we moved on to the Pont du Gard, an ancient bridge and aquaduct built in the 1st century and about 20 minutes down the road. It is both beautiful, and amazing that it was able to be built 2000 years ago. I cannot comprehend how they got the enormous sandstone blocks of the arches up into place … although I suspect that slave labour was cheap and plentiful.
Here’s a fun fact: the engineering on the aqueduct is so good that they managed a 25cm fall in every kilometre. And that was 2000 years ago.
We would have liked to have done a guided tour of the facility, but the only tours available were in French, and as we have determined already, our French is limited to “Je ne parlez pas Français” (I don’t speak French).
From the Pont du Gard, our next stop was Avignon. We wanted to see Avignon for a couple of reasons – it is both another beautiful, ancient walled medieval city, and one of our grandies (Elias) has a thing for Emma the yellow Wiggle and her singing of “Sur Le Pont D’Avignon” (all about dancing on the bridge of Avignon), so we had to see it and send him a photo.
It was after 1.00pm and we were getting hungry, so we looked for a boulangerie on the way to Avignon and found a beautiful little place in the middle of nowhere that got really good reviews … so we stopped.
We got a chicken and salad baguette and a couple of filled croissants (lemon and orange), and we ate in the car at the side of the road.
On a side note, we have seen hardly any McDonald’s here in France, but here is a fun fact: McDonald’s have changed their corporate colours in France from red and yellow, to green and yellow in an effort to set themselves apart as environmentally friendly and sustainable.
But regardless of their colours, we have hardly seen any of them as we have driven around. But seriously – why would you eat McDonald’s when you can get fresh baguette with chuncks of chicken, beautiful cheese, and salad for less money and still be stuffed to the gills?
And the filled croissants … I’m going to have to learn the words to the French national anthem. My goodness they were good.
We had been warned that Avignon was one of those “hot spots” in France where tourists are targetted. With Claude and his red number plates, we might as well have a flashing neon sign above the car saying “tourist” … so we were keen to visit on a day when we were carrying no luggage so – if the worst happened and we were broken into – we had nothing of value to lose from the car.
Avignon traffic was a nightmare, just like pretty much everywhere else in France that we have been.
A couple of wrong turns and a little bit of indecisiveness on Joséphine’s part, and we looped the old walled city a couple of times before we got our approach right.
I confess that I am starting to turn into a French driver. I’ve realised that being polite, putting on your blinker and waiting for someone to let you in is never going to happen … so you just put on your blinker and start merging.
The guy in the Mercedes in the next lane has more to lose that I do, and a space for me will become available.
It’s funny how French drivers can be really selfish and arrogant, yet they can also be very polite and thoughtful.
We were trying to get into the carpark of the old city. Joséphine told me to turn left in 50m, and MBW told me to turn left NOW, and I found myself in an impossibly narrow left-turn lane in the middle of a very busy road, with two lanes of cars travelling bumper-to-bumper on either side of me, and I was stuck.
So I put on my right blinker and tried to merge back into the traffic … like that was going to happen.
Seriously, I wouldn’t have let me in!
And then some French driver felt sorry for me and stamped on his brakes and flashed his lights, giving me an opening to get back into the traffic again.
Maybe he saw the red number plates … ?
We got into the carpark, parked Claude, and went out in search of the Pont d’Avignon.
You have to pay an entry fee to see many of these monuments, so we bought the multiple entry pass for the Pont d’Avivnon (Bridge of Avignon) and the Palais des Papes (the Pope’s Palace).
I didn’t know that the Popes made Avignon their home at any time – I thought that they all lived in the Vatican – but there were 6 papal conclaves held in Avignon during the 14th century.
Various kings, then Popes built and extended and modified the building over many years, and I would have to say that it is one of the largest and most impressive buildings that I have ever seen.
Think of the largest old stone church that you know – St John’s Cathederal in Brisbane. That would be the size of the Palais des Papes grand hall where large gatherings of dignitaries occurred. It is an absolute labyrinth of buildings and rooms, all interconnected by tunnels and doorways.
The “formal kitchen” had the biggest fireplace that I have ever seen. And the Pope’s formal study was probably the size of a small house.
In fact, the place was so big, that it took us an hour and a half just to do a self guided tour.
I have to say though that they obviously never realised that the bigger you build them, the harder they are to keep warm.
By the time we had finished the tour, we did a quick walk around the old town but we were getting tired, so we decided to head home. We had about a 45 minute trip back to Nîmes, and we had nothing planned for dinner.
It was about 5.30pm, starting to get dark, and we needed to battle the Friday night traffic out of Avignon (which was absolutely crazy, let me tell you).
We made our way back to an E.Leclerc (like a Costco) about 10 minutes from home and bought some supplies, then headed back towards home.
I dropped MBW back at the apartment, and I went off in search of our carpark to put Claude away for the night, then walked back home.
Dinner, another episode of Reacher, and we were done.
We had both walked well in excess of 20,000 steps for the day and it was taking its toll.
Maybe tomorrow – Saturday – will be more of a rest day. We only have a walking tour planned for the morning.
You have to live in hope …
Ciao
#Europe2025
You fit so much into a day. So much to see! The food/snacks sound inviting . Enjoy every minute