Nimes and La Feria

What better way to spend the day than to see 2,000 year old ruins in a beautifully quaint little French village and cap off the afternoon with a Spanish bullfight and sangrias? After a night of dancing to Mamma Mia and Aretha Franklin hits, I and three other girls dragger ourselves out of bed prematurely and sleepwalked over to the Office of Tourism, where we boarded a coach bus destined for the Roman city of Nimes an hour and a half to the northwest of Aix. There, we promenaded around the Jardins de la Fontaine, a pictoresque park with winding paths that snake up a hill and thermal baths below ground and, off to the side, the ancient Temple of Diane to make sacrifices to the gods for your good fortune at being able to come to such a beautiful place. We then climbed up said hill on a very steep path and saw the old lookout tower.  The tour continued down towards the Maiscon Carrée, this rectangular building constructed in 2 AD for unknown purposes and is studied today in many a french class as a great example of the Roman architectural impact in France. This weekend in Nimes was La Feria, this big festival dedicated to the celebration of the harvesting of the wine grape, so the town was swarming with people and there were tents setup along the main avenue selling food and little souvenirs and bands were playing what sounded like polkas and Spanish salsa every couple of feet.  We arrived at the Arena/Amphitheater, Roman site of gladiator games, now turned into site for les Corridas (bullfights). I saw my first and last Corrida, interesting from an educational and cultural standpoint, very disgusting and nauseating from a humanitarian standpoint. We saw three bulls put to their demise in the traditional fashion-bull comes out, is taunted by matadors with pink cloths, then come the men on horses who spear the bull a couple of times in the back, then more matadors with these things that look like juggling pins with spears on the end and they stick six of the large pins in the bull's back, then the actual matador star comes out with his red cloth and does some skills and footwork, and finally brings out his sword and puts the final blow in the bull's back. The arena was strangely silent throughout the whole thing and when the matador took his final bow, there was applause but it was not roaring by any means and we even heard some boos, and we couldn't figure out why.  After that, we roamed around La Feria, the party/celebration and ate at this little sit down place outside, sipping (free) sangria which was pretty good. We made out way back to the bus and drove a half hour outside the city to the Pont du Gard, Roman bridge and aqueduct in this remote area of the countryside that was very fun to walk over, with the Mistral blowing a fresh wind on our faces. The weather today was fantastic, great sun and cool breeze.  Tired and really sore from all our walking and hiking, we napped on the bus back to Aix, and made it back for dinner. All in all, a super successful séjour.