The drama of lost luggage ended happily Friday when we returned to Marseille airport and successfully collected our bags that arrived on the evening flight from Brussels the night prior. I never want to look at the accidental thong underwear again.

David and I were last in Nîmes in January, 2023. The first winter that we did an extended break like this was in January, 2020. For weeks leading up to our trip, the news was filled non-stop with news about the large number of pneumonia cases overwhelming China. I was sitting in our apartment rental in Nîmes listening to the news on the radio when they announced that entire cities were beginning to go into forced lockdown in China, and I remember thinking “wow, those poor folks, that must be so challenging”. We were home from our trip at the end of February, 2020, David having brought home a persistent cough and fever. Two weeks later, the WHO declared a global pandemic, and that was that.

We are here now, resuming travel where the pandemic suspended us. Our first visit to Nîmes was perhaps 20 years ago, drawn in by the city’s ancient Roman roots. We find ourselves returning because we are so charmed by everything that this city and the region have to offer.

Because this marks our sixth trip here, we are extremely comfortable and familiar with the day-to-day, and with all of the local attractions. We are renting with a new landlord this year, having spent the previous two trips with another owner in a smaller apartment just down the street.

As I mentioned in the previous post, our first stop was to a large supermarket, Carrefour, where we picked up things like houseold cleaners, shampoo and shower soap, and wine. There are smaller iterations of Carrefour within walking distance to us, which we visit several times during the week for dinner items.

In addition to the Carrefour supermarket, we also visit local outdoor markets as often as possible. Each town, large and small, has its own market day (sometimes more than once a week), where vendors set up stalls and sell vegetable, fruit, meat, fish, chicken, regional specialties like cheese and olives, eggs, and my favourite, rotisserie chickens and potatoes. Nîmes’s weekly outdoor market takes place every Friday along one of the main roads, Avenue Jean Jaurès. We visited on Friday, and picked up: three types of olives, some Swiss chard, spinach (the leaves of which are the size of dinner plates), leeks, carrots, and a “jambonneau”, a small piece of fresh ham cooked on a rotisserie spit.

These outdoor markets are delightful, and also can be expensive, so I do not believe they are necessarily accessible to everyone. They are culturally and historically important though, so I like to make an effort to visit often and purchase as much as our budget will allow.

Next, we hit our favourite local bakery, Le Pétrin Nimois. This bakery makes breads as well as pastries, and it is almost impossible to go there and leave with just a baguette. There are always plenty of pastries and viennoiseries (flaky breakfast thing like croissants and pain au chocolat) as well as squares of thin-crust pizza all sitting happily in the cases, making you throw your daily carb limit out the window as you ask for a wedge of flan, a fougasse d’Aigues Mortes, and perhaps a French-style tiramisu with peaches (lighter texture, chopped peaches, and a bit of crumbled shortbread instead of soaked lady fingers) to be added to your baguette order.

It is a given that I drink more wine and eat more bread and pastries here than I ever do at home, but thankfully I am also more active here. In Ottawa, I struggle to get in 10 000 steps per day, often needing to get on the treadmill after dinner to top up my step count. Here though, it’s normal for me to log 20 000 steps per day, and more when we give up our car rental.

One of the things we really love about Nîmes is its large park, the Jardins de la Fontaine, just steps away from our apartment. It was created in the 1700s, and features important Roman ruins such as the 2000 year old Tour Magne (remains of a Roman watch tower of a wall that used to surround the city) and the Temple of Diana. The weather is always lovely, so we take long walks here daily, climbing all the way to Tour Magne. I often spend time reading here as well, sitting on one of the many shaded benches scattered all over the park.

Just down the street from us is the Maison Carrée, a Roman temple also about 2000 years old, dating to around the first century AD. Though heavily restored, it is one of the best preserved Roman temples in the world, and was named a UNESCO world heritage site in 2023.

Earlier today, David and I drove out to the Pont du Gard, again to re-visit a favourite old Roman site. The Pont du Gard was a 50km long aqueduct built around the 1st century AD, and was in use for about 500 years, delivering water to Nîmes from the river Eure (near Uzès). You can still walk an a restored bridge that runs alonside the ruins of the aqueduct, and marvel at Roman ingenuity. This never, ever gets old for me.

Sundays in Nîmes are relatively quiet, because unlike in Canada, the city closes for the day. The bakeries close at noon, as do the grocery stores. The retail shops are closed all day. I do like this practice, because I am old enough to remember when Sundays in Canada were also quiet. Once Sunday shopping became legal, everyone and everything seemed to become a little more frazzled, and a little more stressed. We never seem to turn it off, and we are just constantly moving.

If you have read this far, I am shocked and delighted at your perseverance. I wanted to get all of this down on the blog and out of my head before the details became fuzzy.

Thank you for reading.