Provence, Part 1

After driving about 4 hours from Vichy, we arrived at our first stop, Pont du Gard. The Pont du Gard is a bridge that was built by the Romans as a part of their system to transport water to different cities. It has the largest arch ever built by the Romans that spans over the river below.

Continuing with the Roman theme, we then drove to Nîmes, where we saw one of the still standing Roman coliseums. This is the most well preserved of the coliseums standing today, so it certainly provided a good idea what they would have looked like when the Romans used them. The tour came with an excellent audioguide that explained some of the history behind the gladiator to gladiator fights but it mostly talked about when specially trained gladiators would fight bears, lions, etc.

We then decided to head for the hotel. We located it fairly easily with the help of the GPS, but after I got out to get the key Mom drove away since there was one lane and someone was behind her waiting to get by. 20 minutes later, she resurfaced. Apparently, going around in a circle to reach the hotel again wasn't as easy as one would assume.

After that ordeal, we headed out to a nearby restaurant and had an excellent dinner and the best dessert so far - frozen nougat with red berry sauce.

Not surprisingly, it wasn't hard to get to sleep that night!