Nimes

28-10-2010
Originally uploaded by cspatrick

Thursday, October 28, 2010 Day 120
This morning we got moving quickly as we wanted to catch a 9:25 train to Nimes. We were not certain the train would run, as this is a scheduled strike day. We arrived at the station about 9:15 and bought our tickets. There was already a TGV train sitting in the station which was scheduled to depart at 9:20. It was going to Nimes, but the tickets we bought could not be used on this train. We went to our platform and our train came in about 7-8 minutes late. We boarded and chose our seats – the train was not particularly full. The TGV finally pulled out, and our train followed about five minutes later, around 9:40. We arrived in Nimes half an hour later without incident.
We walked to the arena, which is an old Roman ruin constructed about 100 C.E. Our entry to the arena got us audioguides in English which took us through the entire arena. The audioguides were outstanding, giving an interesting but not too-detailed history of the arena, the atmosphere in which it was built and used, a glimpse of Roman times, and other uses for the arena. Near the end there were detailed sketches and descriptions of four types of gladiators. There was also a room with reconstructed gladiator weapons and armory and some videos of Hollywood’s version of gladiators and recreations of gladiator fights. After that, there was a good deal of bullfighting history and costumes as well, but by this time we were museum-ed out so we skipped most of that.
In the midst of our arena visit, Elisabeth called, said it was a nice sunny day and was about to propose an outing. I told her that we were in Nimes sitting in the arena, and not available for an outing. I expressed concern that we might not get back to Montpellier because of the train situation, and she said if we couldn’t get back, to let her know and she would see what she could do. She certainly couldn’t come get us – she has a little 2-seater. Fortunately, we did not have to avail ourselves of her offer.
From the arena we went to lunch. We had bought a multi-pass to enter the arena. This pass would get us in to see a 3-D movie at the Maison Carrée, another Roman building – this one built in 16 BCE, and also into the Tour Magne (great tower) atop more Roman ruins around a thermal springs. Our lunch, however, was the typical French meal where no one is in any hurry, not to take our order, to bring our food, or to bring our bill. We did not get away from the restaurant until after 2:00, which did not leave us time for both the Tour Magne and the film at the Maison Carrée. We opted for the latter for two reasons: first, we were interested in the film and had not been inside the Maison Carrée before, and second, we had been to the top of the gardens in which the Tour Magne sits, even though we hadn’t actually been into the tower itself. It was on our agenda a year ago when we visited the area and we had explored the gardens and the area around the tower at that time.
The 3-D video was well done. Afterward we ambled through the city center a bit, then returned to the train station to catch our train back to Montpellier. All our anxieties about the trains not running were for naught – our trip back was uneventful until we got off the train in Montpellier.