The towns of the South

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To make full use of our remaining time in the South we selected a few key cities/towns/villages to daytrip to before we leave. First up was Nimes which was well known for it’s roman architecture and history. It had the worlds (apparently) best preserved roman arena built in 2AD. It was really impressive and mostly intact – a lot more so than Rome’s colluseum. The best part about it was the audio guide and displays throughout. They did such a good job of telling us of, and getting us to imagine being there throughout its history of gladiator fights, circus’s, slave killings, military base, and bull fights. There were sound effects setting the scene on the audio guide, video displays, and costumes and weapons on display. They still use the arena today for two annual bull fights, and daily concerts over summer.

Nimes also had a very well preserved old roman town hall. Again they had a fantastic tourist experience in it. They played a high quality documentary style 3D movie re-enacting certain scenes from Nimes past. It was effective for showing the current roman remains set in the town of the past. Also it was great to get the 3D flyover view of the Pont du Gard which is the three level roman aqueduct out of town (that we decided was too far to get to see).

The shops and the old area were all nice and quaint, similar to Montpellier. But the best thing here was the winter sales had just started! By law shops can only have two sales per year, so we haven’t seen a single thing on sale up till now. I was annoyed to see three things I’d bought last week from Beziers on sale for half price. Everything was generally 30-50% off so we got a couple of bargains.

Our next day out was to ride bikes along the canal du midi, but being Sunday all bike hire places were closed. So we town hopped our way home again in a direction we hadn’t been, stopping at Pezenas for lunch. We loved this village, and decided we’d like to stay here next time we come. It was filled with artisans, a few of which were even open. They have their workshops at the back end of the shop and are working there while we look at their stuff in the front. There were all sorts, like leather, ceramics, pottery, jewellery, glass, art. They were all very individual and unique and were true artists rather than spitting out mass produced tourist appeal stuff. Although they obviously did want to sell to us tourists.

Some cities are old in a stylish classic quaint way, and some are just plain old and yuk. Unfortunately we found Marseille to fit this second category. It smelt bad of urine, dog poo, and sewage. Not just the odd whiff that we get sometimes everywhere else, but a constant smell. I actually wondered if the street cleaners had been on strike for a couple of months, there was litter everywhere.
There were a few nice old buildings but they were swamped by the mostly old run down, uncared for ones. We kept wandering around, thinking we were in the wrong areas. We were even uninspired to shop. We had a tourist map which had some recommended walks so we did the one through the old town which was helpfully marked by a red line along the footpath. Again we kept thinking we must be missing something as didn’t find anything noteworthy (apart from a couple of churches) along the whole way. There were supposed to be artisans through the area, but we only saw a couple and they didn’t compare to those in Pezenas.

In Marseilles defence there was a lot of building work going on. A huge Intercontinental Hotel was going up with an old stone look construction and nice landscaping (according to the photo board) and another massive development by the port area, amongst other things. Maybe once those projects are complete and the street cleaners (or rain?) do some work, the place might have a better feel. We ended up going back to the train station 1.5 hours early and catching an earlier train than what our tickets were for.

Most of our travels have been east of us, so we’re getting very familiar with the country side. A lot of the track runs between the sea and estuaries, which are home to flamingos. We were on the look out for the flamingos each time but saw them only three times. They were very pale pink but a beautiful shape. The further east we went the crops changed from grapes to sunflowers. Huge fields of sunflowers in full bloom are just beautiful. We also passed over the Rhone as it neared the sea which is the third time in our travels we have seen it (previously in Strasbourg and Lyon).

We had a lunch booking at a restaurant in Malagas (the village next to ours) on the Tuesday. It had a good reputation, which was proven by the fact there were no available dinner reservations the whole time we were staying there – so we had to make do with the lunch (and plan our days around it!) We were told that the chef chooses for us after letting him know only what we don’t like. The list for Sophia would be embarrassingly long so we decided to limit it to seafood and offal. The food was amazingly presented, and the veal skewers we had for our main were even enjoyed by the girls, despite them thinking they didn’t like veal.

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