Photo Time

Look at me, the mad poster! Hardly anything gets posted for weeks and weeks, and then suddenly it's like I'm doing nothing else!

I mean, sure, they're not block-of-text posts like I usually do, but at least they're still interesting. Right?

So, today's post is going to be a photo show. I recently went down to Nîmes in the south of France to visit some friends who live there, and we went to a lot of really awesome places and took a lot of amazing pictures.

A picture's worth a thousand words, right? Right. Let's get started, then.

This is a statue of a Bullfighter that stands in front of the grand Arena in central Nîmes. (In French: Les Arènes) He's dressed in full regalia: tight-fitting pants, sparkly jacket, ridiculous hat, and carrying his pink cape, though obviously the statue is metal and un-colored.

The best part. (Sorry, Mom.)

This is the actual arena, as seen from outside. Sort of makes you feel like you've just teleported to Rome. If you look closely at the bottom arches, you can see the metal grills keeping people from walking in anywhere but the official entrance. You do need to pay to get in, unless you live in Nîmes and can show your ID card to prove it.

Some pictures I took of the inside of the Arena. The stone is old and worn, and I kind of thought I would feel all funny, seeing it, like "Whoa this is hundreds of years old.", but actually I just kind of wished the stone would heat up a little, because you froze your butt off if you tried to sit on it. Also, the stairs slope at a very subtle angle, and you always feel like you're going to slip right off. It's not a very pleasant feeling.

The view from the very top of the Arena. I know it doesn't seem all that high from the photos, but I was having a seriously hard time getting myself to stay up there for long enough to take the pictures. If the wall hadn't been like three feet thick at the top, I probably wouldn't have done more than glance over.

That wall was really, really long. The great thing is, behind that wall (which is actually a part of a several-hundred year-old fortress) is a city. A completely functioning, economically stable city. It's called Aigues-Mortes, and it's a tourist city inside of a four-walled castle. Inside are a bunch of cafés and gift shops, as well as stunningly beautiful houses and even a gorgeous old Catholic church. You can take a tour of one of the towers and go all the way around the ramparts (the top of the fortress walls).

Some pictures of the Catholic church in Aigues-Mortes.

The entrance of the tour building. You go in, pay a small fee (except if you're a student) and you can visit the fortress itself.

Let's see if I can roughly translate this for you guys.

There's the name of the museum, and then at the bottom it says

"One finds here:

The Galley, where the Huguenots, condemned for their faith, were held.

The Grill, bringing to mind prisoners like Marie Durand, known for for her memorable carving in the stone: RESIST. (We will come back to this.)

The Huguenot Cross, the emblem of all Huguenots dispersed in all refuge countries, the one which signifies a French connotation.

Several pictures I took while taking the tour of the main tower. It was such a gorgeous place. The tower was used as a prison for Protestants, and you can go up and visit the rooms where they were kept, as well as the top of the building, which has a lovely view.

Said view, out over the lovely town of Aigues-Mortes. It really takes your breath away to see it. In the distance of some of the pictures, you can see the local beach on the Mediterranean, the Grau-du-Roi.

Some pictures of the inside of the tower. The light is kind of bad, but there's no electric lights in the tower, only sunlight.

 Remember the sign I translated? This is why Marie Durand is famous. She was a Protestant woman who refused to renounce her faith. She was kept in the tower of the fortress for years and years, and has been credited with this carving. In the stone (I know you can't see it well in the photos, it was all I could do to see it in real-life) is carved one word, in French: "RESISTER", which, obviously, means "Resist".

And...I've officially run out of good pictures. I hope you liked them, anyway.

~Jocelyn Harris