This past weekend, I went on a three day trip with my boyfriend, Alex. We wanted to go to Marseille, and Alex brought up the idea of making a stop in Nîmes and seeing the Pont du Gard. He showed me a picture of the grand bridge and I was right on board with the plan!

To make the most of our one day in Nîmes, we caught a bus in Grenoble at 6:30... This of course meant I had to wake up shortly after 5:00am, which was not an easy feat! My tired state didn't help when we realised that the bus did not leave from the bus station, but instead the train station - meaning we had to run through the train station to catch our bus on time. If I wasn't awake before, that bit of stress did the trick!

After a brief layover in Valence and a short train ride, we arrived in Nîmes shortly after 9:00 am. We set off immediately to explore the city. I never even heard of this city before so I was pleasantly surprised by the city as a whole. It has a lot of architecture left from the Roman Empire, making it a very beautiful city.

We started our exploring at the Arènes de Nîmes, which is a roman arena, just like the Colosseum. It was very beautiful and it was fun to try and picture how the tournaments would have looked like back in the roman ages. After the arena, we headed towards the Tour Magne. Along the way we saw a beautiful roman temple (la Maison Carrée) and a little Zen garden.

After walking along some canals, we arrived at the Jardins de la fontaine, which is a beautiful roman garden that leads up to the Tour Magne. After a walk through the park, we reached the tower and walked up to the top to enjoy a panoramic view of Nîmes.

Believe it or not, we finished all of that before lunch time! Since we had conquered all of Nîmes, we hopped on a bus and headed towards le Pont du Gard. The Pont du Gard is a huge stone, Roman bridge that sits in a beautifully conserved area. We enjoyed an afternoon picnic-ing and hiking around the bridge. The visit ended with some mandatory ice cream and a bus ride back to Nîmes.

We spent the rest of our evening relaxing and people watching from la Maison Carrée and a crêpe dinner served by a disgruntled waitress, who reminded us that the French service industry is not based around the customer.

After dinner, we hopped on a night train and arrived in Marseille shortly after midnight. We headed straight to the hotel to get a good night sleep before adventuring around Marseille.