Bicycle Hunting, Roman Aqueducts

---

Tuesday, April 19 (OK...it's now May 4, but....)

After a quiet day of shopping for groceries & wine (and discovering you can bring your clean glass or plastic liter bottles into the wine store and have them pumped full of their house wines for far less than buying bottles of the same wine...good to know!) and walking around the town of Sommieres, we headed out in search of the Pont du Gard - one of the oldest Roman Aqueducts in Europe.

We detoured to the tiny town of Calvisson, trying to find a bicycle store to investigate renting/buying bikes for those with long stays. After a frustrating search, we gave up and hit the highway again - only to see the bike store at the next roundabout. Duh!

(Spoiler alert: those with delicate constitutions may want to skip this next paragraph. I must mention that when we first stopped in Calvisson to ask directions to the bike store, we parked in a free parking lot under a large tree. When we returned to the car, the windshield was covered - and I mean literally covered - in brown bird poop. There was so much that we could do was just laugh. We couldn't imagine what kind of bird had picked our car for his morning ablutions; thank goodness Doug had paper towels in his backpack and we had several water bottles in the car. I figured it must have been a huge owl...after cleaning the glass as best he could, Doug agreed. Yuck.)

OK - back to the Pont du Gard. We drove to the beautiful town of Uzès (pronounced oo-zez) for lunch. Uzès is prosperous, tidy and very appealing; it has many cafes, all spilling out on to the wide sidewalks, tree-lined sidewalks. The town certainly caters to tourists - the medieval buildings are incredible and have clearly been well maintained. There was quite a bit of restoration work going on as we walked throught the town - preparing for the busy summer months, no doubt.

As we ate lunch, Nancy heard the familiar sounds of shutters closing. Yep - it was 12:30. Almost all the stores were closing up for lunch, not to re-open until 2pm - some at 2:30. Oh well - saved us money again! We couldn't wait for the shops to re-open, so we window shopped. There were beautiful stores there...again, catering to the tourist trade, but with really interesting merchandise.

On to Pont du Gard.

Here's the Wikipedia link, if you'd like to know more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_du_Gard . We found the huge parking lot by the official entrance to the bridge & aqueduct...and were surprised to discover that parking is 15 Euros. We felt a bit better to learn that the fee included admittance to the bridge for the driver and up to 5 passengers.....

The entrance to the site was somewhat disappointing - a large, very modern, 1-storey structure housing a government-run cafe, 2 typical souvenir shops, explanations in every language of the Pont and the Roman Aqueducts - and, we were pleased to discover, very clean bathrooms. We didn't spend any time in the entrance building, but headed out onto the bridge.

It is literally awesome to gaze at the massive, 3-tiered aqueduct built in the 1st C AD. I couldn't stop taking pictures of the ancient edifice, and it was great to see all the swimmers & kayakers in the river, floating under the aqueduct, just as thousands - millions? - have over the last two thousand years....

Back to Sommieres to meet Wolf & Judy, from Vancouver and who have driven down from Paris. Great evening to end a great day!

---