July 9, 2004
Hello, world. I have made it to Nimes in southern France, gotten myself a hostel bed and lunch, and found an internet cafe, all only about 24 hours later than expected! Let me recap.
I began my trip with a flight from Minneapolis to London's Heathrow airport, which I spent next to a friendly German man. Neither of us could sleep very well, so it was nice to have someone to commiserate with over the crying children, who inevetably fill every transatlantic flight. The sun rose a bright red over thick white clouds, which I enjoyed even though my German friend reminded me what a red morning sky means. An omen for the rest of the day? Perhaps. I arrived in London at 6 a.m., which left me seven hours to get to Stansted airport (waaaay across town) and linger far too long waiting for my next flight. But, I did finally catch my flight to Nimes, on which I slept very soundly for an hour.
Then I made an interesting discovery: Nimes has a tiny regional airport, which had no currency exchange, and the ATM had been removed recently, apparently for lack of business. So it was only by the generosity of the airport shuttle driver that I got to town without having to walk. The hostel turned out to be fully booked for the night, so I spent the night at a budget hotel across from the arena.
A word about the arena: Nimes is best known among tourists as the site of some really fantastic Roman ruins, the centerpiece of which is the arena, a full-blown stadium that is still used for bullfights (yes, we are close to Spain) and other public events. Ordinarily I would be in full support of this, except that last night there was a pop concert that kept me awake until about 1 a.m. Boo to that! So I was very happy to book a room at the hostel this morning. It's about a 20 minute walk from the interesting part of the city, which is sprawling in a way that I didn't expect to see on this side of the pond. The bus hadn't started running for the day, so I got a nice workout carrying my pack up a winding hill road.
I spent much of the day wandering the city. I had a picnic lunch at the Jardins de la Fontaine, a public park built around a classical-styled pond. There were lots and lots of people playing boulle, and a couple of kids doing bike tricks on the marble causeways. I found some other Roman remnants as well: a guard tower atop a hill, and a half-ruined structure of unknown purpose, and a Parthenon-like structure called the "square house." I also found a sunburn. I wonder what is the French word for sunscreen?
It turns out that the hostel is totally dominated by Francophones. This was unexpected to me, because English was the lingua franca (so to speak) of the hostel world in eastern Europe, but I guess Nimes is a popular vacation spot among the French, and not so much among the rest of the world. One of my roommates for the night spoke only French, in fact; I am finding that English may not get me as far as I'd like in this part of the world. Just gives me more incentive to learn the language, I guess. In the meantime, I found a troupe of Brits to chat with over dinner. They're a group of friends who are on a short vacation, just in Nimes, and I wonder if they didn't arrive here the same way I did (i.e. found a cheap fare). They had plans to party down, but I opted for sleep instead. Naturally enough, I thought of Sam and our travels last summer, and in his honor I had dinner at a Chinese take-out restaurant last night. (Also in honor of my pocketbook, and my deficient French skills.) I have also begun a project that he inspired: last summer Sam dreamt up a scheme for chronicling his travels in receipts, upon each of which he would write a short phrase on his state of mind at the moment. Instead of that, I have decided to grace every receipt with an original M. Romanowsky pencil sketch. It's pretty comical so far, but I am determined to learn to draw something by the end of the summer.