DAY 5: Off to Nimes

 Monday April 10, 2023

Breakfast out - just for a change.

Poor Ky is currently suffering from an "attack" of canker sores. They hurt!

We need new sim cards for our devices but there are no cell phone stores in Uzes, so we headed off to Nimes for the day. Because Monday was still an Easter holiday we checked to see that some cell phone stores would be open before we headed off. Next step was to find the car. (To avoid this worry in future I took a Tile tag and tossed it in the glove compartment.) 

The first couple of stores we located - that Google said were open - were closed. Finally we found a little shop run by a couple of Middle eastern types that was open. Unfortunately they could not speak English, American or Australian and I could not speak French or Arabic and so our "technical phone communication" was a bit limited and so I ended up buying whatever they put in the phones - which turned out not being much. The bottom line is that we do not have a French phone number - so no inbound calls or SMS messages. We do seem to have email and data. I am not sure how long it will work. (And we do have Wi-Fi at homes in Uzes.) To celebrate/commiserate we had a coffee and bun, then continued with our day.

The Roman Arena (Its not a Coliseum because it has a sand surface) was built in the first century and could hold 20K people! It has a sandy floor so that they could rake over the blood between acts. Quite amazing.

It seems in amazing shape, 2,000 years old!

Can you see Deidre? In the middle of the second row, white pants.

Did you know that denim originated in Nimes? The material was shipped to the USA in the 1800's from France and was stamped "de Nimes" and hence developed the name.

On the way back to the car we peeked in on the Maison Carree ("square house"). This temple was modeled on the temple of "Apollo" in Rome and is one of the most notable surviving structures of Roman civilization (per the guide book). 

We did not go in. I took a few photos and moved on.

Geoff - Please tell me what the numbers add up to.

We stopped at a supermarket on the way home. Deidre bought stuff to make dinner, plus a frozen pizza for an emergency.  When we got home we (meaning Deidre and Kylie) were too tired to start cooking so we heated up the pizza and opened a bottle of the $3 vino.