Aqueduct at Pont du Gard
After
breakfast we drove down to the Pont du Gard, one of France’s most popular
tourist attractions. Built in the first
century A.D., it was part of a 31-mile long aqueduct built by the Romans to
carry water from a spring to the colony of Nimes. It is the highest of all Roman aqueduct
bridges and one of the best preserved, yet another World Heritage Site. It’s 160 feet high at this point, and part of
a great engineering feat—there is only a 56-foot drop in elevation over the
length of the viaducts, a drop of only 1 foot in 3,000, and it is estimated to
have carried 44 million gallons of water each day to provide for the citizens
of Nimes. It was used for hundreds of
years, but limestone deposits finally clogged it up around the 67th
century. This was certainly an
impressive site, and the scale of the structure cannot be imagined in the
photograph alone, unless one tries to see the people in the photo on the
roadway that is still used alongside the aqueduct.
Then it was further south, to the
city of Arles on the Rhone River, where we encountered yet more monuments and
structures from the Roman civilization.
This is another World Heritage Site, and was also the residence of Dutch
painter Vincent Van Gogh for a couple of years.
Vincent led an impoverished and disturbed life, although he created more
than 300 paintings and drawings here.
During his lifetime he sold only one painting, and had to depend on his
brother, an art dealer in Paris, for his sustenance until his death at age 37. If only your great-grandparents had bought up
a hundred or so of his works and stored them for you reveal to the world today
. . .
Roman amphitheater in Arles
The most impressive of the Roman
ruins here is the amphitheater, built in 90 A.D. to hold 20,000, and still in
use today for occasional bullfights and concerts in summer. Back then it was used for chariot races and
bloody hand-to-hand combat for the spectators’ amusement. You can decide whether killing bulls these
days is more amusing than people killing each other in front of a capacity
crowd. For us, the area was peaceful
during our visit, and unfortunately lined with gift shops and souvenirs, which
took up much of the afternoon for some members of our group.
During the shopping spree, against
my better judgment I perused the local ice cream stands, determined not to
yield to temptation absent extraordinary circumstances. This area of France is known for its
production of lavender, and beautiful fields of it can be seen from the
highways. Noting at one stand the
availability of lavender flavored ice cream, it was determined that the extraordinary
circumstances were present. This might
be the only chance a person would ever have to try lavender ice cream, so I
plunked down the two euros for a single cone of the stuff. And truthfully, while it was lacking in some
of the qualities a true connoisseur expects, it did have the flavor of
lavender. It was an unexpected surprise,
and though one would not advise the major ice cream producers to do a large run
of this particular flavor, it was the first such treat of the trip.
The search for good ice cream
After the long drive back to the
B&B, we rested for 20-30 seconds before embarking for another gourmet meal
down in Avignon, which began at 8:30 in the evening. The restaurant Fou de Fa Fa was a true delight, but the dinner and wine had us in bed well after 11. The days here are much longer than back home,
with daylight beginning around 5:30 in the morning and ending near 11 at
night. We seem to have been making good
use of all the available daylight on this trip, so will be up early again
tomorrow to head for Monaco.
Charlie and Tricia
©2014
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