I met Christina's friend Justin, who is teaching in St. Affrique, the first weekend we came to Millau. We hung out for about 20 minutes before we had to head back to Millau and he mentioned going to Nimes in few couple of weeks and wanting someone to travel with. I told him I might be interested. He came to Millau a couple of weeks later and stayed the weekend, and we decided to go for sure. I met him at the bus station in Millau at 7:30 am, he coming in from St. Aff and then we took the bus to Montpellier. We ate chocolate crepes and had coffe and then we wandered around the shopping district before we caught our train to Nimes. We walked out of the train station into a beautiful spring day and straight up to the Arena, which looks like a smaller version of the colloseum and where they still have bullfights. Though we had no solid plans of what to see or where to stay, everything just fell into place. We went to the tourism office and on the way came across the Roman ruins that makes Nimes a place to visit. It looked simultaneously huge and too small for the space in it was in. I will attach pictures later when I can use my own computer...
Anyway, we got the directions to the hostel where we could stay for 15 euro a night and a 40 minute walk from the center. Then we found a cafe to eat lunch outside. We sat there for a couple of hours and ate salad and drank wine. We decided to walk around and check out the local hotel scene. We found a one star hotel (they mark everything by stars here on the signs) and it was 35 euro a night for two, so we took it. It was just a couple blocks away from the colliseum, so we came out great on that one. Then we wandered about for a bit and came across the Roman gardens. There were a bunch of white statues and a pond and some stairs built into the hill at the end. We wandered about and took some pictures and then headed back to the center for dinner. We ate pizza and I tried a traditional French apertif, cassis with kir. Then we went to a bar for gin and tonic and found the first of many glow sticks from the night. We found one gay bar where we found more glow sticks, and had champagne; then we hit a club like place which was tightly packed. This place had a monitor in the front room showing the back room where there is supposed to be dancing; all we saw was a bunch of people standing still. We wandered from bar to bar, just to check things out, and noticed how many highschool students and middle aged people were out and about. I guess most of the people our age live in other places, like Montpellier.
The next day, we slept in and then found ourselves a good French breakfast of coffee (the only time I've had coffee in large cups in France by the way) baguette and jam and croissants. It was great. Then we went walking to find the tower that was one Justin's photocopied page of the town. We found a little park entrance that we decided to take a detour through. After a rambling park walk of about 20 minutes, it led us straight to the tower. All in the all weekend worked like this the whole time, things just falling into place. Then we had a leisurely lunch of crepes and red wine (a theme of my southern France experience) and finished with a glass of champagne.
The train back to Montpellier left us just enough time to catch our bus. So we go wait for the bus and then try and get on it, and the guy is like, no you can't get on this bus, this is a private bus. So we go back to the train station and the lady is like, it wasn't a bus, it was a train, and you missed it. But you can catch the next bus. So, we wandered around Montpellier a while and got to the bus station just as the bus was pulling away. We flagged it down and just barely made it back to Millau by midnight.
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