Provence and Nimes...

Wednesday 27th December
Woke up in Nimes and got ready quickly (more of the Surprise Bread basket toasted for breakfast!) before heading off with Alix and Francoise. We left Languedoc-Roussillon (the department that Nimes and Montpellier are in) and entered the region of Provence. We stopped at the site of the Chateau des Baux (castle of the Baux - not sure what that means, I think it might mean castle of the border because it's in the region called Baux-de-Provence which I think means border of Provence or Provencal borders). It's a small Medieval town on the top of a stony mountain that brings the Grampians to mind (but without the bush). The town is still very nice and there are lots of shops and cafés and probably houses too. We walked up through the town and ended up at the entrance to the chateau. Outside the entrance was a mediveal shop, complete with armour, weaponry and jewellery. I love those shops and especially loved this one as it was much less touristy than those at Mont St Michel (those who know France will know what I mean, those who don't, I went there last year with my family). There was a notebook in there with covers made of wood with carved images in them. It was beautiful and I planned to buy it when we finished the tour of the chateau. They also had the helmet keyrings (Laura has one). To my dismay the shop was closed for lunch when we finished exploring the Chateau so I missed my chance to buy those things.
The chateau itself was magnificent, though hardly a chateau. It was more a set of ruins with some surviving architecture and staircases and rooms, but it was wonderful to explore and the views from the top across the landscape of Provence (with olive trees and fields of flowers and mountains and rivers in the distance) were breathtaking. I think Alix and Francoise were a bit bored because I took a long time, exploring every nook and taking a ridiculous number of photos but oh well.
We left the chateau and the town and drove some more. It was now definitely lunchtime (around 1:30 I think) so we were searching for lunch. Francoise had wanted to take us to one particular town but after driving around in circles for a while we decided we couldn't find it and we settled on the town of St Remy. There we found a cute restaurant and sat down. We all had the main and dessert option so I had a veal dish and Alix and Francoise had beef. The veal dish was wonderful...it came with rice and a creamy sauce and was very good. We also got very yummy complimentary bread rolls...i kept the left over one for later! For dessert we all chose the Tarte Tatin which is basically a form of apple tart. It was magnificent! It was warm and very soft and yummy and came served with natural home-made vanilla icecream and a drizzling of caramel sauce. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
We finished lunch around 3:00 I guess and went for a walk through the town of St-Remy, another very old Provencal town. It was very cute and there was lots of lovely little shops and bakeries down the skinny streets. We visited one santon shop and were allowed to visit the creche the owner had created upstairs. It was large and very good - he'd even put the larger figures in the foreground and the smaller figures in the background to create the feeling of depth and distance!
We returned to the car and drove to Les Antiques on the edge of town. They are a set of Roman structures right beside the road. There is a big circular grass area and in the centre are an arch and a mausoleum...that area is very beautiful. Then across the road you can visit the ruins of the Roman town of Glanum. We went in there and explored the area where there is just a huge amount of ruins. They make the shapes of rooms and buildings and baths and temples and meeting areas. It's all very atmospheric and ethereal. The pamphlet explains what each building might have been and what purpose it served in the ancient civilisation. Unfortunately we only had an hour there so we had to be quick, but that was ok because I am sure it was 2° or more colder around the ruins that it was in the carpark!
By then it was 5 or so and starting to get dark so it was time to return to Nimes.
To my surprise I found out that we were not staying the night in Nimes but instead were driving back to Montpellier that night. So we did that and ended up at Francoise's apartment in Montpellier. There we had dinner (I think it was chinese style - a chicken and mushroom dish and fried rice) and went to bed!