058 France: Florensac part 2

France: Florensac part 2
Pezanas; Carcasonne Castle; Nimes; Pont du Gard; Le Grau-de-Roy; Port Camargue; Avignon; Montpellier

Pezanas, where for 2E you can purchase a sight seeing map. Friends Fay & Tommy have a holiday house here. It is a wonderful village, extremely well presented with loads of art & craft shops.
You can go into many of the buildings. This stair case seemed reminiscent of Shakespeare.

 We are in round 5 of the European crazy golf championships with Ruth currently winning 3-2 (tourmaster here - she beat me by 10 strokes on that Pirate course!! Not happy Jan!!). We've also noted a pirate theme. I think we have over 10 photos of Frank with pirates, he says this is Capn Jack Sparrow.

 There is conjecture over the renovations of Carcasonne Castle, but we really enjoyed the place. It gave you a very good insight into the feel of a walled city.

Very impressed by the amphitheatre in Nimes. We had no idea it existed. The gladiatorial history and the Roman generals directive to feed and entertain the people led to each general after Augustus coming up with new ideas and it was fascinating.

The place is still used for concerts and bullfights. Unfortunately the scaffolding spoils the ancient feel, as a tourist but I bet attending a concert there is quite special. Note that the French bullfights focus on the matador collecting ribbons from between the bulls horns, not swords and death.

 The aqueduct at Pont du Gard. Built before Christ was born. While it has been very 'touristified' it needs to be just to accommodate the number of people - 2M p.a.

 Sur le pont de Avignon. A song we had drilled into us in first year French.

Avignon was so busy all we could do was drive around and around and around - yes three times before we gave up and went elsewhere. The traffic jams were so slow it was easy to take good pictures. Claudette (GPS) took us down bicycle only alleys around the Palais des Papes !

These street-side Paella cookers are all over the place. Not sure if you have a quarter of a chicken whole in your Paella, we certainly don't, but it is the norm here as well as all the seafood.

 

Saintes-Marie-de-la-mer  has a huge bull ring. I loved this statue.

See the people on the church roof? We were a bit gob-smacked. You could climb to the top, clamber about the roof to your hearts content - no safety bars or anything to stop you plunging to your certain death - at least there wouldn't be far to go for the funeral!!

We went to the Camargue for a few days. The big three there are Flamingos,  white horses & bulls.

 

Barbara and Heather - two wonderful ladies who saw our car in Florensac, with the Australian flag on the wing-mirrors, and tracked us down. They invited us for coffee and then to a superb Jazz festival. You pay 1E for your jug and then go get it filled with wine.

Later in the week they invited us into their home and we also went to dinner with them and to see the Florensac festival. They really looked after us and made a big difference to our stay in Florensac.

Montpellier. A lovely town. We only had a morning there so we took the Petit Train.

They have managed to combine the old and the modern very well colourful trams a la Melbourne.

We were amazed when we attended the Florensac Festival and the free concert was a 16 piece Las Vegas style show band. So talented. We lost count of how many changes of clothes they did. At first there were only about 100 people but by 11pm the crowd had grown to about 1000. The festival goes for 4 days and each evening is a different band/entertainment.

We had a lovely lazy morning on the Canal du Midi. There are 7 locks to be navigated, built more than 400 years ago. The force of the water was amazing. Loads of people go to watch.

and that was Florensac.

Took us a while to settle into the chaos of being in the South of France during August. We learned to go to the beach after 5:30pm. We found the places to park the car. We knew we had to be at a destination by 10am if we wanted to park.
Our batteries are recharged and we are back on the road to 'do' Spain and Portugal over the next 6 weeks. We are now into double digits, only 93 days left.