Thursday 18th August

We opened up the laptop over breakfast and received a lot of emails from back home. It’s great to hear from you all and doesn’t feel like we are that far away at all.
We got the 9.10am bus to go to Nimes and the trip took about 35 minutes. We left Uzes in bright sunshine and a temperature of 23 degrees but we hadn’t gone too far out of town and we ran into a thick bank of fog where at times we couldn’t see very far at all. But by the time we got into Nimes the sun had broken through and the temperature was up to 26 degrees. We were dropped off at the railway station and went wandering for the information centre which we never found. It was again time for a coffee and we sat on the sidewalk and had coffee and talked to two English women who both lived in France and were getting together for their fortnightly coffee. One had lived and worked in France for 40 years and the other lived in a village close to where we were staying in Uzes.

They sent us in the right direction to see the Arena de Nimes. I have read about it previously and wanted to see it after seeing the Coliseum in Rome on our last trip to Europe. We rounded the corner and there it was not 50 metres away. It was truly a wonderous sight. It was so big and with no prior sight that it was just around the corner, we were gobsmacked. The arena was built by the Romans at the beginning of the second century AD after Nimes became a colony in 49AD after the fall of Marseille. We paid our monies and followed the arrows and listened to the audio guide which was very good. We climbed the steps to the very top of the outside wall and saw the city of Nimes outside the arena. Today the Arena de Nimes is the best preserved Roman amphitheatre in the world and they regularly hold concerts in here. I would love to see one of those!

The arena is 133m long, 101m wide and the outside walls are 21m high, made up of two levels of arcades and divided into 60 spans. It could hold 24,000 people who enjoyed the show of gladiators and animals fighting. It was amongst the 20 largest Roman amphitheatres of the 400 in existence when it was finished. The floor was sand and raked over several times during the day to get rid of the blood. According to research gladiatorial fighting is now seen much more as a proper form of fighting sport by extremely well trained volunteers rather than the convicts given a sword and told to fight.

Nimes was the centre of gladiatorial combat and an ancient epitaph still keeps alive the memories of the gladiators who died in the arena. This epitaph is in the Nimes Museum which we didn’t go to see but instead saw the copy inside the arena. There is also a section under the arches dedicated to the bull fighters who became famous in the Arena de Nimes. There were actual costumes worn by the most famous bullfighters and a film of one particularly famous fellow whose last fight in Nimes was in 2006. Bullfighting came to Nimes from Spain in the 11th or 12th centuries.

We had also paid for a 20 minute 3D viewing of the Heros’ of Nimes and this was held in another famous building that looked more Greek than Roman, called Tour Magne. This is also truly spectacular and the columns although worn are so big. It reminded me a bit of the Acropolis in Athens. We didn’t have to wait too long and in we went with our 3D goggles, dark grey – not the old green and red ones. Although the story was good and informed us of the major players throughout the years that shaped the city of Nimes we didn’t think that the 3D effect was as good as it could have been.

Out into the hot sun again – and it’s now 33 deg and getting hotter. Time for our beer and lunch. It was even hot sitting and eating under the big awnings but there was a breeze. We had had enough and decided to catch the 2.15pm bus back to Uzes. What a speedy driver we had and got back into Uzes in what must be a record time. We are now just relaxing, waiting for the butcher shop to open after he has had his lunch so we can get some sausages for tea.