The next stop on our whirl-wind trip around France as to visit the Famous Pont du Gard. The Pont du Gard is an ancient Roman Aqueduct built by their engineers around 2000 years ago. I visited it 3 years ago, but it is worth another visit, especially since Lee is an engineer and would appreciate seeing it. I think Mary and Nicole will enjoy it as well. The biggest reason why we wouldn’t is because it is still blazing hot each afternoon with the current heatwave!
The Pont du Gard crosses over the Gard River and was constructed to provide water to the Roman city of Nîmes. The aqueduct structure is built with several tiers, but the water was carried at the very top tier for engineering reasons.
As part of our visit to the aqueduct, we visited the museum and learned a lot more about it than I had previously known. The Pont du Gard was only one of many structures built as a part of an entire conveyance system to carry water to Nîmes. There are remnants of the rest of the system, but they are not in very good condition and in some instances, not even recognizable anymore. The roman engineers of 2000 years ago had many challenges to this project, mostly that the grade of the channel was very slight and required very precise construction to have any chance of getting the water to flow to Nîmes. The upper channel of the Pont du Gard was even raised slightly after the construction was finished to improve this flow rate.
But even with this modification, the entire system was only operated for 150 years before it was abandoned because of low flows and the resulting high maintenance. When you view the aqueduct today, you notice that one of the ends of the structure seem to be in disrepair. This is because after the water conveyance system was abandoned, the romans began repurposing much of the stone work for other projects. The aqueduct was partially dismantled for this reason. So, as wondrous as the Pont du Gard is to see today, it was considered a failed project in the long run.
After visiting the aqueduct and accompanying museum, we set out for Arles where we had plans to stay. It wasn’t a long drive from the aqueduct, at least in theory. We used our modern technology to guide us to our destination, GPS. We followed the directions the GPS was instructing us to follow, but as we got to town, the directions were guiding us into smaller and smaller streets, and then into small alleys until we reached our destination….. Which wasn’t our planned destination at all. It seemed that we had arrived at the correct address, but not the correct town! And to make matters worse, we were wedged in pretty tight in the alley we were in. And the way forward was blocked by bollards, steel poles set in the ground to prevent cars from entering the alley from the opposite way we came from. The prospect of backing out of the alleys and streets was not very promising, but we were going to have to try it though. What choice did we have?
Just as a wild notion, I got out of our car and went to see if there was any way around the bollards, but the openings were just too narrow for the car. So I did the next best thing. I checked to see if the bollards could be removed by just pulling them out of the ground. And they were! We were simply able to pull them out of their post holes and drive right into a parking area and then exited into the adjacent street. Whew!
I think we ended up in Beaucaire, but I’m not completely sure. But it looked nice a nice town and had a nice restaurants and shops that looked inviting, but we had to backtrack and find our way back to Arles.
Once in Arles (finally), we easily found our real Hotel where we had our reservation. It was right on the Rhone River, the large part of the river with large river cruise boats lining the river banks. But there were not any river side restaurants nearby so we went into the old town and found a nice area with lots of places to choose from to eat. Afterwards, we strolled around the town and saw the ancient Roman coliseum that was built there. But one other thing I wanted to see was the place where Vincent Van Gogh painted one of his most famous paintings, The Café Terrace at Night.
Supposedly, the existing café was recreated to look like the painting, but once we found it, the location looked run down and not anything close to what the painting looked like. But now I know! The silver lining was that we found section of Arles that looked very upscale with lots of nice restaurants. A place to consider the next time we are in Arles, for sure.