Today (Sunday) we were up relatively early and off to a bakery when it opened its doors at 8, then to a café where the street cleaners (the ones we think were at the end of their shift) were having several glasses of wine each (yes, at 8am). We had coffee. It turned out the car exit ramp was quite straightforward and not very steep. Also the uphill starts after the gate and ends in a special lane (no merging). All well and good, but I wondered how I could get back into that precise area of the lot without engaging in some dodgy manoeuvres of my own. I had put on my biking things and stuffed my bike in the car as I planned to visit St. Remy and les Baux and Arles. At first it looked like it might be too foggy and dangerous, but as we left the Gard and approached the Vaucluse (and this is pathetic fallacy I believe) it cleared right up. After Rosanna and her luggage (including Pussy Jones) was safely stowed in the train, I headed for St. Remy, which only took 20 minutes from the Avignon TGV and I found a parking spot on the outskirts of the centreville. There was some kind of Sunday antique fair and the place was crawling with tourists, so I did not linger, but headed to les Baux, which I had formerly thought the most spectacular landscape I had ever seen.
That was before the Gorge de la Nesque. I climbed all the way up into that town (just below the chateau) and it was jam packed with bus tours. Between that and the cobblestones I also decided to leave there quickly, and fancied maybe a lunch at the Bistro du Paradou where Peter Mayle and Charles Aznavour are regulars. Alas, it is closed on Sunday.
There was nothing for it but to head to Arles, which has a long drawn out approach and layout typical of these towns in the flats. There was some kind of bullfight festival on (no doubt why hotel rooms were so scarce) and it was also crawling with tourists (all in either Tilley-style or straw cowboy hats). I had a steak frites and glass of red costieres de nimes and headed back to St. Remy, taking a slightly different route (so I did not have to climb les Baux again and deal with all those vehicles on that narrow road). As luck would have it, it was completely flat and featured a bike lane, so I made very good time and arrived moments before my paid parking (not that anyone seemed to be checking) expired. Then, miracle of miracles, I got from St. Remy to Nimes and into the parking lot and into exactly the same space we had departed from in the morning (without doing anything tricky or illegal at all, unless you call following the signage tricky) and then to the hotel in one hour flat.
Subsequently I spent almost an hour trotting around with my macbook looking for a bar (or restaurant – anything) that is open on a Sunday night. I am NOT going back to Country Rock, even though it advertises itself as ouvert 7 sur 7. I would rather eat Petits Ecoliers all night. I think I will do a little Michelin search to see if there are any restaurants I might like to patronize. Tomorrow I am contemplating a bike ride to Montpellier, if I can figure out how to get out of the city on something other than a major road.
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