But on our way to the mall, we were forced to pass the gare, that hallowed, enticing portal to new and foreign lands, and made the very spur-of-the-moment decision to go to Nîmes.
We knew absolutely nothing about the city when we arrived. But after walking down a street that looked main-drag-ish, we came to an archeological museum and learned that Nîmes, formerly under Roman rule, still housed a good deal of ancient architecture.
After wandering around for far too long trying to find the centre-ville (only to discover that Nîmes doesn’t really have one), we eventually came to the Arènes, the best-preserved Roman amphitheater in the world, where we took the audioguided tour in French. You could tell it wasn’t as big or impressive as the Coliseum in Rome, but it was on the whole just as enjoyable, if nothing else because it wasn’t (as) congested with tourists.
We then power-walked across town to make it to the Tour Magne, the remains of a tower in the Jardin de la Fontaine park on the top of a hill, and also the ruins of the nearby Temple de Diane.
The park at Jardin de la Fontaine.
Atop the Tour Magne.
A bit later, as we sat and ate our grocery-store dinner, a girl approached us and asked, “Vous n’avez pas de message?” (You don’t have a message?) She gestured to her cell phone. We tried to ask her what the hell she was talking about, and I think one of us might have offered her our own cell phone, but in the end she just said thanks and walked off, leaving us to ponder whether or not we’d just been part of a failed drug deal.
The rest of the evening was spent in leisure and wandering. Besides trying and failing to get a drink at a swanky rooftop bar, the coolest part was the fountain in the Jardin de la Fontaine park, which turns blue at night.
Alice Wang and I bade a temporary goodbye to each other the next morning, for it would be approximately a week before our paths crossed again…
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