Painting the Tower de Mages Nimes South of France

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This morning was sunny and full of hope, I woke up refreshed and ready to go, had a cup or two of coffee and a quick chat with my love. I caught the bus and found myself outside the Jardins de la Fontain, it was truly beautiful, there’s a big water system which was put in place by the roman’s 2000 years ago and the garden was built be the last French king Louis 14th. You walk around a raised park which has stone balconies which looks down on the water ways with stone arches and tunnels, a great world for ducks to live in. I did a complex drawing which took me about 30 mins to do. There’s a beautiful temple ruin called the temple of Diana the goddess of hunting built in 25 BC. When I went inside it first looked at the ruin and thought oh no people have graffitied all over the walls, but at closer inspection I saw dates like Micho 1745 and 1367 with a tool carved into the stone… It was graffiti from over 2000 years of people… amazing and I thought quite poetic… I had to write my name and 2010 with some chalk, it seemed ok to me and made me feel like I was being part of history.
I then started the long walk to the Tower de Mages which overlooks the whole town of Nimes… It was 2.70 Euros to get in but well worth it. You walk up spiral stairs for what seems like 10 mins and when you get to the top there enough room for about 20 people at a squeeze. I huge my canvas off one of the stones and started to paint, every so often big groups of tourists or school children would come up and spend 5 mins looking about a pointing to the monuments. I made 7 Euros in tips, a few times I had people rub up against the painting even after I told them it was wet… funny how people are when they want to see something and there are people in the way… I had a few nice confusations with people, an art critic called William, and a Vietnamese man who called himself Sky who kept slapping me on the shoulder and telling jokes he was really cheeky, and two love Chinese girls who were doing the beaus arts and took photos with me, they were so cute.
As I was walking back to the bus stop I saw a sign saying one of the bus drivers had been attacked so no bus would be running today. My heart sank as I did not know where I was or which direction I should go to start walking. A beautiful blond girl asked if I was waiting for a bus and where I going with my painting… I said I was staying at the Bastide camping, and she raised her eyebrows at the distance I had to walk… she said she was walking in that direction and I could follow her. I’m so lucky, she was really sweet and in her 3rd year of studying law her name was Laurie, she took me half way then draw me a map for the rest of the way, I gave her one of my postcards.
I started my walk looking at the map and about 3mins later a car pulled up and a man said you’re staying at the bastide camping… I said yer how did you know, he said he lives there all year round and he’d seen me, hop in I’ll take you back. Thank you thank you thank you!!! His name was Jacque.
So I got back in good time, I had a big salad in the café and watched a film, called Whatever works, with my boyfriend over the web cam. As The café was closing the bar maid said that it was an orange alert and that it might flood tonight, that if I had problems in my tent I could sleep in the back of the bar… I thought oh no this sounds bad… as I went back to my tent and I had a new neighbor. The guy popped his head out of his tent and said would you like to put you paintings in my car for the night? It’s going to rain hard. Wow people are amazing here and so thoughtful, His name was William and his job is to count trees, he lives in Marseille. I thanked him and went to bed. It didn’t rain that hard we were lucky because not far down the road it did flood. I feel really thankful for all the help I’m having on my trip.

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