Second Week in the South of France
Trip Start
Jul 27, 2007
1
16
31
Trip End
Oct 22, 2007
Montagnac,
France
Friday, September 14, 2007
After a hard drive to and from Andorra over the weekend we had a fairly quiet day. A few of us hit the local internet cafe then as a group we headed across to Pezanas to have another look at the shops. On the way home we went via Meze to pick up some of the local seafood. We got a few kilos of muscles, oysters and cooked prawns and took it home and made a some sauces and cooked up the muscles and some of the oysters. For about 30 euros we cooked up a massive feast for 6 of us (Simon doesn't eat seafood and cooked up his own sausages).
Tuesday's touring had an ancient Roman feel to it with our 3 spots all having cool Roman structures as the centrepieces. The first stop was the city of Nimes which is north east of Montpellier. Here we did a tour of the Arenas de Nimes which is a smaller version of the Colosseum in Rome. They boast that it is the most complete ancient Roman arena still standing and they definitely right. It was built about 30 years after its big brother in Rome but in much better shape. It is still used today mainly for various bull fighting festivals. We left from there and continued east to the city of Arles stopping along the way for lunch in a park on the side of the highway. It was here I did my best impression of Don Burke (I'm sorry the Don will always be the man and much better in the yard then Jamie Durie the impostor) and found they had actually planted a few good old Aussie gum trees. Once in Arles we spent a few hours wandering around the streets taking special notice of the arena in the centre of town. Not as impressive or in as good condition as the arena in Nimes it seemed it was still being used for small concerts. Also there was many other ruins as well as a Roman amphitheater built into the hill beside the arena which I believe is also still used today. Arles other claim to fame is it was the place Vincent Van Gogh painted many of his more famous works including Starry Starry Night. He also hacked off part of his left ear whilst living here (it would be over 100 years before another artist who too was misinterpreted would go one better - Mark "Chopper" Read). As the afternoon got late we headed off to the final attraction of the day which was back towards Nimes. At Pont du Gard there is one of the best examples of ancient Rome's aqueduct system. Here you are able to walk out onto the bridge underneath the massive aqueduct and really appreciate the size of the structure. On top of the aqueduct there is slot in the stone that would be over a metre wide and nearly 2 metres deep that would have carried the water. After this we traveled back to our base in Montagnac and on the way home we were able to pull off one Chinese fire drill just before getting home - no one got hurt and more importantly no animals were harmed in the process. For dinner we tried out the local pizzeria and had a quiet night at home as everyone was tired from all the driving. .
The next day (Wednesday) we headed south west to the town of Carcassonne. The original town was built on top of the hill fully fortified with the castle making up part of defensive network. Most of the walls are still intact showing how well this town could be defended in it's day. I walked between the series of walls for an hour before going inside the inner wall and wandered the shops. After here we stopped at a nearby dam that had a sandy beach which Simon and Daryl had a swim at. We got back to Montagnac late in the after and had an early dinner so we could get up to the local sports bar and watch a couple of games of the rugby world cup. The first game saw Fiji beat Japan 35-31 and the second had Italy defeating Romania 24-18, neither were full of high quality rugby but the close scores kept each game exciting.
Thursday marked our last full day in Montagnac so went decided to have a quiet morning where we tidied up the apartment and sorted out who owed who money from accommodation, car rentals and rugby tickets. We also knocked a lot of washing off which was good to complete before getting back on the road. In the afternoon we made one last trip to Penzanas for a full crepe meal (both savory and dessert style).
Friday morning we were up before the sun and were heading back to Montpellier airport to fly to the UK. I was quite sad to say goodbye to my sofa bed with its star wars sheets from the Ellary 80s. This place was quite good even though from the out side it was only a door in a wall. We had a good time there and it was great to be able to cook your own meals every now and then.
