Romans were awesome! (19th August)

Public transport around Provence is not as frequent and cheap as other places we have been too. So it was an early 6:30am start to catch the 7:45am bus (at a price of 7.40 euros per person) to take us on a 45 minute journey to Pont du Gard. The interesting thing about this trip is that the bus followed a route into some little side towns and it was cool to see these houses along the way. Pont du Gard is an AMAZING aqueduct that the Romans built 2000 years ago to transport clean water from Uzes to the city of Nimes. Get your head around this: the water fell a total of 12 metres over the 50,000 metres in length. It is insane and would have required a seriously clever surveyor! The Romans pioneered clean water and waste water and all things water. Thanks to them Shona is able to have at least one shower every day. The bridge is incredible and is free to visit, but for 10 euros we got to walk through the top level where the water flowed and visit the museum. Totally worth it, even though the tour was in French (Shona did a good job of smiling and nodding and pretending to understand). We wished we had taken our togs to have a swim in the river as it was already super hot and the water so refreshing. Next time! We caught the 11:32 bus to Nimes in order to check out more Roman ingenuity. Nimes has the most intact arena in the world. When we say arena, think Colosseum, but smaller. It was really interesting to learn about the different types of gladiators who fought and their tactics. Contrary to Hollywood's portrayal, they did not fight to the death. Mainly because if they died, the games master would have to pay the gladiators owner for the loss of his investment in the gladiator. They also had a referee to keep control of the match - so imagine boxing 2000 years ago. When the Romans conqueror a new empire they wanted to infiltrate the Roman way of life into the already established society. They did this by building identical arenas, theatres and forums in every city so as to remove patriotism and maintain uniformity. The arena is still used for gigs and as such there was a stage and scaffolding all around which meant our photos aren't quite as good as we wanted them to be. Nimes is also home to the Maison Caree (aptly called the square building) where we watched a 3D movie about the history of the citizens of Nimes throughout the ages. Lastly we climbed to the top of Tour Magne which ticked the box of a tour thing overlooking the city. This however is an old Roman ruin, which was part of the defence when it was a walled city. Funny fact is that Mike can sing a song from his school French lessons titled "I'm a little green frog (but in french). On the way up to Tour Magne we saw a pool with green frogs in it. So it's true they do have green frogs in France. We haven't eaten any legs yet! To get home we missed two trains waiting in the queue to get tickets. Luckily we could make the last train, plus bought tickets for the next day and managed to eat very delicious pizzas while we waited. Did we mention it is still really hot at 9:30pm - 34 degrees says the sign. Cold showers again...