Pont du Gard

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18 degrees today! Not a cloud in the sky!

After the usual leisurely breakfast here in Avignon, we sped off to Pont du Gard, which I remembered seeing as a child. It's a huge, huge Roman aqueduct built around 19 BC, with a bridge tacked on by the French in 1783. Quite a thing to take in. It's a whopping 275m long, and I had to walk a few hundred metres upstream to photo it in full, even with a wide angle lens.

Off-season, so only a few dozen people there today, which was just as well - it gets a million visitors a year, apparently.

Afterwards, we completed the set of local anitquities - visiting the arena at Nimes. Best preserved in the Roman Empire, apparently. They still hold bull fights there. The monument has been handed over to a private company, so while the audio guide is top notch, the entry fee has been hiked. Most of the myths I'd been fed in Form 3 Latin about the gladiatorial contest were debunked. In its hey-day, it was more like tennis than Sparticus.

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