France with Beast 1: Nîmes

We traveled by train from Montpellier to Nîmes.

Nîmes is called the most roman city outside Italy. One can see why- only moments on foot from the train station, we stumbled across this ancient and magnificent arena.

Alas, it was only an afternoon visit, and then we were off to Avignon by bus. But not before receiving some valuable advice from a man experiencing homelessness -and extraordinary drunkenness- who shared right up in our faces (um, hello, social distancing!), all in French:

"Who are you? What are you doing here? Head to Monaco. That is the only safe place to be. Jump the border there. I know the way. Who are you. Are you fucking Germans? You fucking Germans! [swigs from wine bottle, brushes bottom of feet off on his jeans] Monaco for 24 days is what I say. Then it will all be over. Go there now. That's where I will be. You, you fucking Germans!"

Confession. When on the bus I checked for wifi to see if I could research a bit about Monaco. Such are the times - unraveling every day with news about the Coronavirus and rules for containing its spread. We had only earlier that morning taken seriously some advice that Shark overheard from a distressed woman on the phone while at the London airport (no one but no one can leave France for 21 days, I think it was). Making travel plans during a pandemic based on eavesdropping, so why not take a nugget of intel from this pro Monaco and (possibly) anti German chap seriously!?  

One other tale that makes me a bad mom for sharing. On our bus ride to Avignon, Savvy was asking about Monaco and why it might be an ideal place to camp out. I explained where it was - the posh little bit of land on the Med. Savvy recognised it at last, "Ohhhhhhh. Mon."

What?

It turns out, Savvy had done very well in Geography last term. The countries of Europe and South America all needed to be placed on a computer-based map, in French. Savvy aced her test.
But she aced the "test" and the "test" only, by learning the first three letters of each country.

So we then had a comical discussion about the health crisis in Ita. How it was spreading to Esp, and Fra was not far behind. We only skimmed over Cro, Tur, Lit and Lat. Sue, Nor and other such northern countries were a bit better off at the moment. We got truly stuck when it came to Netherlands (Pays-Bas, in French) but if you stick to the rule (first 3 letters only), she really knows her stuff!

As for Nîmes, we will be back!
As for heading to Mon...the idea didn't seem half bad, actually!