Nimes

The sad day came where we finally had to leave our house in Rivel and make our journey to Italy. We all woke up early, packed our bags and had a nice and last visit with Cathy. After that we crammed our bags into the car so that we too could fit in it. Once that was all sorted out we hopped in the car a made our way to Italy. We had planned that we would just drive to Nimes for the day and then find a campsite or a hotel there. The drive to Nimes was a lot longer than we thought. Once we were in Nimes it was dark out and the traffic there was horrible. We kept getting lost and ending up in the back streets of Nimes. After all that we finally found a hotel that would be suitable for the night. Since we were in a big tourist city we knew things would be a little pricey so we found a hotel that wasn’t so pricey. It wasn’t fancy that was for sure. The hotel we stayed in was called the Cat Hotel.

At first we thought it was a spa for cats, but we soon found out that it was for humans. The price was good, but I have never seen so many framed pictures of cats in my life before! There were literally 10 pictures on both sides of the hallways and about 20 going up the stair cases. As we were looking for our room I even heard cats meowing. We then found our room with 4 beds and a miniature bathroom.We had to crawl over top of all the beds to get to the other side of the room. We just dumped our bags on the ground and went out to look for our restaurant. We looked for a long time for a restaurant and we were starving by the time we found a nice pizzeria. We ate pizza and went back to the hotel where we slept in our scratchy (furry??) beds.

            The next morning we headed out of the hotel and looked around the city. The first thing we looked at was the Roman amphitheatre.

The amphitheatre was really impressive. It is the most intact amphitheatre outside of Rome. We listened to a great guided tour of the stadium and heard details about how it was used to do a lot of maiming of a lot of people and animals. They also had a good display about the bull fights that go on there today. We looked around the stone walls and the sandy arena and then headed back to the hotel to check out. Once we were checked out we were back on the road again. After a day’s drive we found ourselves at a nice campsite by the Mediterranean Sea. We set up our tent and went to the first restaurant we found. We ate good seafood and then walked along the beach at night. When we got back to our tent it wasn’t long before we were all fast asleep.

             The next day was a really beautiful day. This was going to be our last driving stretch before we entered Italy. We drove along the Mediterranean coastal route, which was amazing. We then stopped in at Cannes where we saw the sandy white beaches and the celebrities hand prints in the cement.

After that we ate lunch in Nice. It was a bit painful sitting on the rocky beach during lunch, but it was good. We were going to stop for a swim in Monaco, but we couldn’t find any beaches, and the one we did find wanted 50 euros for parking and a swim. So since it was getting dark we crossed the border into Italy and camped at a bad campsite. Later that night we had a nice meal back in France, (our last meal in France for the trip). Then we decided to look around some more in the area. We stopped in a church because my mom wanted to see what show was going on in it. It was kind of weird! It was a whole bunch of people dancing around in white and red clothes while singing. The thing is it got even weirder when a man came out with black tights on and no shirt. He started dancing around the stage. Then after that a whole bunch of men dressed in women’s clothes came out and started to dance too. It was an odd night but afterwards we headed back to the campsite and went to sleep.