Another Nutty Day

We are currently staying in very nice hotel that unfortunately has terrible email service so I already have tried to send this email once and found out 12 hours later that it failed, so I will try again and if that fails I will send a bunch from our next stop. If I do get through this time I will send another quite soon after. Meanwhile some of you people are thinking, I am sending way too many Emails. Filling up people’s mailboxes with stuff that some of you may want to see and others are wondering how do I get this crazy person to stop sending me so many messages from foreign countries. Well as I have said before, just send a return email saying hey Garry, enough!!

 For those of you who are not bored with all this craziness I have to tell you, Joani and I had another nutty day.

 We checked out of our hotel in Lyon, jumped in the car and headed for a little small town called Chateauneuf-du-Pape. It was such a great thing we had the Garmin to guide because this was some serious backwoods country we ended up in. At one point we ended up on a small little single lane road that Joani called a farmer’s lane.

If we met someone coming the other way somebody had to back up until there was room to pass . We started wondering if the Garmin was playing games with us until we saw a sign pointing out the direction of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

 For those of you that don’t know Chateauneuf-du-Pape is not only a small French town but also an absolutely great red wine that is made and bottled only in this small town. According to our French guidebook, this tiny French town has a population of 2100 people which I believe constitutes probably 100 wineries, each with staff and family members adding up to 20, plus about 10 people who work in the restaurants around the town. I basically flew thousands of kms and drove another 250 kms to taste as many varieties from these different wineries as possible!!

 And of course dragged Joani along with me! She’s becoming quite a Sommelier.

 After visiting several wineries, doing a few tastings ( I spit into the tasting bucket, I did have a lot more driving planned for the day), and buying three different bottles, we made our way out of town, back along the little country lanes and out on the highway to our next destination, Nimes.

 Nimes is not a usual tourist stop down in the south of France but it has some excellent Roman ruins so of course Joani and I are always big fans. Our first stop was a giant bridge/aqueduct called “Pont du Gard”.

This is an enormous structure and although I have attached a photo it will be hard to grasp the immensity of it. I recommend coming to see it yourself. It is unbelievable!! To give it some justice I have copied the passage from Wikipedia below.

“the Pont du Gard is the highest of all Roman aqueduct bridges and is, with the Aqueduct of Segovia, one of the best preserved. It was added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1985 because of its historical importance.”

   This stop was outside of Nimes and we had to drive right into the city to see our next sight, the “Maison  Carree”.

I have attached a photo but again will cheat and copy a passage from Wikipedia for the description as I won’t be able to do it justice.

“The Maison Carrée is an ancient building in Nîmes, southern France; it is one of the best preserved Roman temples to be found anywhere in the territory of the former Roman Empire”

 If you take my advice and come to see the Pont du Gard make a quick stop here also, it is well worth it!

 And so to add onto an already busy day we jumped back in the car and headed for Arles, where as I have said before, my idol, the king of canvas, the sultan of brushes, the man with one ear, Vincent Van Gogh, resided for a period of time and spent his most productive years.

We got to Arles and found it to be a little like Sienna Italy. A complete spaghetti plate of streets!

But unlike Sienna we didn’t get completely lost because we popped the Garmin out of its car holder and put it on walk mode. Walking our way through the maze of narrow streets we soon found “Café la Nuit” where I sat and felt like an awestruck child. I had to change seats 2 or 3 times thinking, maybe Vincent sat here or maybe he sat there. It was again the culmination of a lifelong dream and I almost couldn’t catch my breath! I have attached a photo and I will not deny I have a dopey expression on my face.

Vincent Van Gogh ate, drank, and painted right here!!!!!

 By the time we left Arles I was emotionally spent and we were both tired. We drove to our hotel in Aix- En- Provence, ate and spent a quiet evening going to bed early. It was an exhilarating, exciting, wondrous day. Tomorrow onto Verdon Gorge.

 What a trip

 Garry