Goodbye Ireland, bon jour France (May 9|10)

After leaving our B&B at 5am,we dropped our rental car off and caught our first flight to Brussels, Belgium. We had about a 5 hour layover and used the time to get lunch and play some cribbage. Jeff won like he always does! Our second flight took us to Nimes, France. When we arrived in Nimes we realized we were leaving spring and entering summer weather. So warm and sunny! Our room at the Imperator was SO nice. We felt very fancy to be staying there. It even had its own espresso machine! We gazed around for a bit then found a lovely outdoor cafe right beside the Arene for our supper. We went to bed early, tired from the early start and all the traveling.

We had a great sleep in thanks to awesome blackout curtains and went down for breakfast around 9:30. We headed out around noon to get our train tickets for the next day. We wandered around the gorgeous city of Nimes, grabbing baguette sandwiches and Heinekens for lunch and eating it on a park bench. Jeff only had to defend Alaina from a few nosy pigeons. We then did a tour of the Arene, an ancient Roman amphitheater where we learned about its history involving first gladiators, then bullfights.

We then wandered over to Jardin des Fontaines and climbed up to the top of Tour Magne, a Roman tower for a great view of the city. Last we visited La Maison Caree, a temple built in the first century. We went back to our hotel for a couple of nibbles, then found another outdoor cafe for supper and a terrific bottle of French wine. Most of the cafes feature set menus that are either two or three courses and these are usually the best value. So we got a starter: mussels Catalan; then our mains were a mixed grill and a huge pizza for Jeff; last we had two great desserts but I can't remember what they were other than that mine had something to do with tiramisu and nutella. We ended the evening with a glass of wine in the hotel's beautiful inner courtyard.