Nîmes & Lyon

Nimes & Lyon

Sally:

We took the train from Figueres-Vilifant to Nimes, involving a bit of faff as Figueres-Vilifant isn't in Figueres OR Vilifant, it's in the middle of nowhere and the shuttle bus taking you there only coincides with certain trains, not ours. Our host ordered us a taxi because I didn't fancy dragging my bag 2 miles out of town. We got one of the new fancy double-decker trains which turned out to be not as cool as I expected. It seems to be more a budget airline approach to train travel, trying to get as many people on as possible and reducing the amount of space for luggage (which is ridiculous as everyone had like 2 suitcases each.)

Onto Nîmes: We stayed in this cool house that looked like a conversion of an old boarding school. Our host wasn't home the first two nights and it was a bit creepy being there alone (Dan suggested it was haunted so I couldn't sleep because I'm five). Everywhere had this old rustic look about it, looking completely different to Paris. Prices were high, the supermarket threatened to bankrupt me.

We had a look at the Roman ruins, including mooching around the big Roman arena and sitting on the steps of the temple, the Maison Carrée. We didn't pay to go in because apparently it's not that great inside, and you're just paying to see some cheesy 3D show.

On the Saturday we had planned to go to the Pont Du Gard, which is this massive Roman aqueduct 20 miles outside of Nîmes and is a big tourist attraction. We spent ages trying to get the jist of the timetables and finally figured it out. OR NOT. We turned up at the bus station and it turned out the timetable change starting on 8th May had jumped a few days early and in the new timetable the buses don't run on a Saturday. To a top tourist destination. SIGH. So after feeling a bit mardy about all the faffing we spent the afternoon in the Jardins de la Fontaine.

Lyon:

"I bet the train will be dead as it's a Sunday." HA. Train was packed out and we had no room on the overheads for our luggage, meaning we had to leave it at the end of the train. I don't really have anything nickable on me but it'd still be a pain in the arse to discover someone's ran off with your clothes. It was only a two hour trip so it was fine, but getting off was a pain as you don't exactly have long to jump off the train and when everyone is getting on and blocking you from your luggage you start to get in a bit of a mardy.

Lyon reminded me a lot like Paris, but more chilled out and cleaner. The old town was gorgeous and we walked up about a zillion steps to get to the old Roman ampitheatres and had a view over the city where we watched another protest going on in a square (3rd protest we've seen so far).

We spent the next morning in the museum of fine art, which we got in for free because we're under 25 and citizens of the EU (whey). We then went round the awesome Parc de la Tête d'Or, which is also a zoo. It was lovely but I fell out majorly with the public toilets there. They have some retarded system where when someone leaves the loo, the door locks for about 3 minutes and you have to wait for a buzz and then you can open the door. The result was me and a group of confused women getting really annoyed, and some woman shouting Écouter at me (listen!) until I somehow ended up opening the door on this girl. I couldn't remember French for sorry so I just legged it out of the queue with Dan behind me pissing himself. FAIL.