Sunday, July 26, 2015

Provence Day 4: Cities of Provence


Today we decided to wander around some small and big cities of Provence. I have to admit - this is not my favourite way of spending time on holidays - I prefer natural marvels way more than architecture must-sees. But I still enjoyed the day. In the end, there is some charm in sitting down for a coffee in a busy cafeteria at the heart of a centre.
We started the day with Saint-Remy-de-Provence. We made a quick walk around its morning market and headed to Glanum - the archaeological site of an ancient Roman city. Radek was delighted to see all of that as he always admires engineering skills. And you can't rely deny that Romans had them!






Our next destination was a well-known city Beaux-de-Provence. There were loads of tourists but no wonder as the place had a lot to offer. The first thing that sticks out is a hilltop castle (or its remains to be precise) with a great view on the plains (see 1st photo). The ruins are really maze-like as there are lots of different little paths that you could follow and the area is huge.









But the real attraction to me was Carrieres de Lumiere - a high-end light and sound spectacle shown in a former limestone quarry. I have to say this was real something. Classical music played loudly in a chilly cave with visual images accompanying the sound made us really contemplative and relaxed. Worth visiting for sure!





From there we drove to Arles - a somewhat bigger city with a huge Roman amphitheater perfectly preserved and still operative.  Again - Roman architecture and engineering amazed us.







Another city that has an amphiteatre is Nimes. This time we didn't go inside but from the outside it looked spectacular. We were already a bit titred by this action-packed day so we decided to stroll around Nimes without any specific destination and made quite a long loop like that.






And finally, a cherry on a pie for the day - Pont du Gard. Yep, that's right, another masterwork of Romans.



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