We had a 6:28a train out of Gare de Lyon to Nimes. Luckily that was both late enough that the metro was running and early enough that most of the Parisians weren’t. This trip was on the TGV line, Train a Grande Vitesse, the high speed train. Like our trip between Rennes and Paris earlier this vacation, we had assigned seats at a 4-person table, comfortable chairs, and perhaps most importantly to Maya and Ian, wifi. Plus the train theoretically reaches speeds of 320 kph and, generally speaking, doesn’t have to contend with traffic, so it’s a nice ride.

We took a metro to the station. During this entire trip, I had been trying to make sure both kids got through the metro entry before I went through. Somehow this time, I managed to get through before Maya made it, and for reasons none of us are quite certain of, her pass would not work. Sean and I could find no quick way to get back through to buy another pass for her, and she of course was stuck. Maya was just on the verge of full panic when an extremely kind person took pity on us and beeped her through with his own pass. Thank you kindly, random French stranger. You may have saved us from missing our train.

After that, I remember the trip being uneventful. We found our train in the giant train station with only a minimum of hand-wringing then got our luggage loaded and found our seats. Ian enjoyed exercising his independence, happily making forays to the bar car to purchase sodas, or wandering around to find the bathroom or a trashcan.

We arrived in Nimes around 9:45. The walk from the train station to our hotel was not particularly long, and mostly shaded. Upon arrival, they gave us some tourist information and a nice map, and we were able to drop our bags off, so we could go explore the area unencumbered.

I had a loose hit list and a bus schedule for Pont du Gard, but didn’t really have a specific plan. We wandered over to the arena first since it was so close and we knew for sure we didn’t want to miss that. There, we found many ticket combo options to choose from. We selected the “Three Monuments” pass and purchased it at a special rate for a family of four.

The Arenes de Nimes is a Roman ampitheatre. It is smaller than the Colosseum in Rome (holding 23,000+ spectators compared with the Colosseum’s 80,000), though the one in Nimes is considered to be better preserved. It’s still in active use today, and in fact during our visit, much to our chagrin, its interior appeared to be outfitted for a concert. At other times, the arena still hosts bullfights.

Built around 100 AD, the arena stands 21 meters tall and has two levels of arcades, each with 60 arches. It is an elliptical structure, 133 meters long and 101 meters wide. In its heyday, it hosted gladiatorial battles. Romans, ever the thoughtful engineers and builders, designed the passageways such that the entire arena could be vacated in something like 5 minutes.

After a good wander through the Arena, with Ian climbing anything he could get away with, we headed on to Maison Carree. The Maison Carree (meaning “square house”) was believed to have been built sometime in the early first century AD (though I’ve seen sources say it was built as early as late 1st century BC). It is one of the best preserved Roman temples in the world. If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I got much out of going inside, but it was included in our ticket price.

Our next walk took us a little further out. The last item on our ticket was the Tour Magne. Apparently Nimes, in the time of the Romans, was surrounded by 80 towers, the tallest of which was Tour Magne. Built around 15 BC, today, it’s the only one still standing.

We walked at least partly through the pretty Jardins de la Fontaine to get there, but even so, it was a sweaty walk. Thankfully Tour Magne was air conditioned, or I may not have made it up the 140 stairs to get to the top. According to signage around the place, in the 12th century, Nostradamus prophesied that there was treasure to be found in the tower (or at least that was the interpretation of his prophecy). After searching, and damaging the tower in the process, nothing was found. The tower was so damaged, in fact, that a central pillar had to be added to reinforce it. The views from the top were indeed lovely.

We had limited options on bus times that would take us out to Pont du Gard, so we needed to abandon any additional sight seeing in favor of finding a quick bite to eat and heading to the bus station. We landed at French fast food chain O’Tacos. You pick the stuffings and sauces for your taco, and they are definitely non-standard, and then the O’Tacos cooks assemble and griddle it right then and there. Their thing is to stuff fries into the taco. It felt like more than I wanted to eat, so I skipped it, but everyone else seemed to really love the addition of fries. Mine had falafel and a handful of toppings and a sauce algerienne that I really loved. Honestly, it was pretty tasty. And we were in and out of the place pretty quickly.

We hoofed it to the bus station and hunted for our bus (number 121). It was a fluke that Sean even found it, I think, but we managed to board more or less just in time for the trip out to Pont du Gard. In my memory the bus-ride, with all its stops, took maybe 45-ish minutes. I’m going to be honest, if I hadn’t found this article about taking the bus to Pont du Gard from Nimes, I’m not sure we’d have known exactly what to do. I think we’d have gotten to the right bus, but where to exit and what to do once you’re there, and more importantly once you want to leave again later on, isn’t always crystal clear.

We started our time at Pont du Gard in their museum. It provides an extremely thorough explanation of the construction, use, and timeline for this marvel of Roman engineering. Pont du Gard is the bridge over the Gardon River that was required to build the 50 km aqueduct that would supply water to the growing city of Nimes. Incredibly, over that distance between its source at the spring in Uzes to its terminus at the Castellum Aquae (water tower) in Nimes, the drop is only 12.30 meters. The bridge section of the aqueduct, which spans 274 meters, only drops 2.5 cm (~1 inch) from one end to the other.

Walking out to Pont du Gard itself was nothing short of breathtaking. The website tells me that at 49 meters tall, this is the “highest Roman aqueduct bridge in the world.” This fact is even more impressive when you realize that It uses no structural mortar. Thanks to the strength of the arch, the precision of the stonemasons, and nothing more or less than gravity, that bridge has stood for nearly 2000 years. Signage in the museum explained that laying the arch stones followed an architectural principle called “the fascination of the void,” intentional use of empty or open space in design. Gravity pulls down on the stacked arch in such a way that the entire arch, once complete, remains stable.

We had wondered what the jutting-out stones were for. Surely with the precision that clearly went into the design and building of this bridge and aqueduct, they weren’t simply sloppy building. Nope; these are bond stones. Again the museum display explained: the bond stones on the bottom provided a place to lean the arch template. The ones on the piers were used to attach scaffolding and other temporary structures.

The aqueduct carried clean water to Nimes for 150 years. Even after that, it carried less clean water to use on farmland and such. All told, it was in use for something like 500 years.

We would like to have gone up to the third level to see the actual aqueduct where water flowed (mortar was used here to help keep the channel from leaking). Alas, this can only be done via a tour. We would happily have paid for a tour but the only English-language tour happened about the time our train was arriving in Nimes that morning. We did consider joining a French language tour, which was available during the time we were there, but ultimately decided to skip it. To see that channel, here’s a very nice Rick Steve’s YouTube video. (It also describes the water tower in Nimes, which we unfortunately didn’t have time to visit.)

The kids (and sweaty grown-ups) would have loved to play in the water in the Gardon River for a while, and I think we would have, if we had more time. Ultimately though, we had just enough time for a quick ice cream back up by the museum and then a bus-ride back to Nimes, where we would finally check into our hotel.

When I was booking, since we wouldn’t even be in Nimes for a full day, I mostly chose the hotel based on location and whether the room would accommodate all four of us. I wound up selecting the Appart’city Nimes Centre – something called an “apart-hotel.” It seemed a little gimmicky to me, but like I said, I didn’t really care all that much.

When we had dropped our bags off earlier, we noticed the building was really beautiful. When we got to our room, we were astonished. For one, we had rooms, plural. And it was easily the largest place we stayed during our entire trip to France. The kids were both delighted, exclaiming on their way in that it looked like a castle. We even had a balcony with a table to sit at, not that there was much time for it.

The clawfoot tub had sort of a shower type apparatus, but if you try to finagle a shower instead of sitting down for a bath, it was a little tough not to get water everywhere. Luckily the stone floors were pretty easy to clean up. I was a little sad we weren’t staying longer.

Since it had been so easy before and since we were all pretty exhausted by this time, we let the kids have O’Tacos again. This time, I sprung for one of their pre-made tacos that was meant to have an Indian vibe. I don’t know that its innards made me think of Indian food, but it was tasty and filling nonetheless.

We spent the rest of our evening bathing and packing and getting ready for another long train trip the next day.