France 2019 – Day 5, Thursday – Pont du Gard and Avignon

Before I dive in, this is the fourth Thanksgiving Mer and I and Dubbs have traveled together, and I am very thankful for the chance to travel. There is no God-given right to travel to Europe, and we are blessed to have the health, time, and resources to get over here more often than most people. We are very fortunate to live in a country where and in a time when travel is allowed and fairly easily possible. I was reminded tonight that our most recent Thanksgiving dinners have been: a French restaurant in Paris, an Italian restaurant in Lisbon, a Mexican restaurant in Amsterdam, and, tonight, an Irish pub in Avignon. Much for which to be thankful, indeed.

On to travel! Water, water, everywhere, and let’s add more. If you recall, I mentioned that the city of Nimes had a huge natural spring of water that supplied the city. Then the Romans spent years and tons of money building a thirty-mile-long aqueduct to Nimes, mostly as a power statement. The water system stated that Rome was firmly in charge of the area. The system fed Nimes with about one hundred gallons of water per second, which was used for fountains and wealthy homes and such. In building the aqueduct, the Roman engineers had to build multiple bridges to carry the water along, and the grandest of these was the Pont du Gard, most of which still stands today, two thousand years later. That was the destination today.

It is a Riordan maxim of travel that when you travel, you waste time or money or both. Today was some of both, as I did not rent a car for this trip, and the public transportation to the bridge consists of three buses a day at odd times. So we wasted some money and took an Uber car out to the Pont, and wasted time on the back end, as we needed to wait for about thirty minutes for the car to show back up. Such is travel.

But it was worth it. The Pont du Gard is more than just the bridge – there is a museum and a short film, and a park around the area, and of course the actual Gardon River that the aqueduct crosses. So the landscape itself is very pretty. The museum is solid, with displays on how the rock was quarried and moved and lifted into place, and a model of all the bridges that were made for the project, and topographical information to show that the water dropped all of forty-five feet over the thirty-mile channel. The movie was also decent, with great shots of the bridge, and comparisons to other objects (about as high as the Statue of Liberty or the Roman Colosseum).

But at the end of the intro material is the real thing, and the Pont du Gard did not disappoint.  From all the views we had of it, it was impressive, and we got to walk out along the bridge that was built next to it in the 1800s. Although we did not have the place completely to ourselves, there were few enough people that we had the bridge all to ourselves. Pictures from both sides were pretty great – either the aqueduct was in the picture, or the river and countryside were, or both. It was a fine day today, so we did not rush around.

We crossed over the river and walked up stairs to a viewpoint for really spectacular views. We could get up to the level of the top of the Pont on the way. You can’t get out on it during off season, which is disappointing, but it was an okay trade-off to have the place with so few people around.

We went back down, and Mer and I crossed over a bunch of uneven limestone floodplain rocks to get by the river, where we sat and watched the river go by. Dubbs stayed on the level ground, since her ankles tend to give out on rough ground. Again, a pretty day, and we took our time.

By then, it was about 1:00, so we grabbed lunch at the on-site restaurant, which, in European fashion, was a leisurely affair. By the time we finished lunch, crossed over the bridge, and got back to the visitor center, it was about 3:00. We called for the Uber driver, and finally got back to Avignon around 4:30.

After we regrouped at the apartment, we headed back up past the Pope’s Palace, past Notre Dame, and up to the top of the hill of the town, to the Jardin du Rocher des Doms. The views from up there are tremendous, especially of the old bridge and the river and the tower across the river. We watched the sun go down, and then explored the Jardin. It is extensive, and there was more to see, but we ran out of light, and the garden was not lit.

We headed back down into town, to go the the aforementioned Irish pub. We had a good supper, and a walk back home, and the finish of a good day. You can be thankful for simple things in life, even when those simple things take place on a different continent. Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving day!

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