Mon Nouveau Monde

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A Short Train Ride Away--Nîmes

Yet again I have fallen behind on my blog, but no worries, I have tons of long train rides ahead where I can blab on and on about my amazing adventures throughout Europe. Anyway, here goes.

On March 26, Laur and I decided to take a short ride over to Nimes to spend the day. We knew that there are some Roman ruins there so we though, hey, why not spend seven Euros and explore a new city. No big deal. I love the fact that we can just hop on a train and be in a totally different place. Though cities in Southern France are so close to each other, they all bring their own flavor. I’ve found differences between all of the cities, and Laur and I love pointing out these differences.

So the train ride was nothing and we arrived in Nimes. We decided that the best thing to do was to go to the office de tourisme and actually get a map. It’s difficult figuring your way around an unknown city without one, that’s something I’ve learned. Of course, on our way to find the office, we ran into les arenes, or the arena that you couldn’t miss if you tried.
It reminded me of a mini coliseum, but still huge. It’s so funny to see ruins within a modern city. It looks like it was just randomly put there, but then you think about what it was like back then, and how it fit right in.



After finding much of what we wanted to see in Nimes, we finally came across the tourism office and were able to get a map. Of course it took forever to find it, and of course there were misleading signs, but as always, we found our way. We scanned out the map over a delicious Italian lunch (yes the French love Italian food—our lunch consisting of pizza and lasagna…mmmm) and headed over to Jardin de la Fountain to explore. My host mom said it’s something we definitely needed to see, and she was right. It was beautiful. Since it was such a nice day, there were tons of people laying in the grasses, that of course said, pelouse interdit or in other words, don’t lay on the grass. Not surprising at all…another unsurprising thing was the PDA that was occurring all over the park. I mean, come on, hands groping things that should not be groped in public…just get a room…honestly. But back to the park! It was beautiful and there was this…festival going on. It was really interesting actually. Tons of children and carnival ish things, such as blow up slides, and small games; there was also a stage for dancing and there was some cultural dance going on; very different, but very entrancing. There was also some kind of judo-ish, kicking, dancing-ish thing going on. It has a name and I know the name, but of course, I’ve forgotten it at the moment. It was so different though. We watched for a while and then walked on. After walking around the entirety of Nimes, we decided to take a train home, ending a nice day, in a nice town, in the south of France .

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