We left Troyes with a strong impression that we may well be back. Not only because the town is lovely but it has ‘Chez Felix’, a cat themed restaurant situated in the ‘Ruelle De Chats’. The food wasn’t particularly spectacular but the interior quirky and the atmosphere welcoming. We enjoyed our evening and set off the next morning for Macon (with a K sound not a C).

We found the hotel, parked up and had a quick explore. We tried to find the restaurant for that evening but ended up with a map malfunction (my version of getting lost). Anyway once we got back to the hotel we thought that Macon was nice but not really nice enough to make a return visit worthwhile, Our meal at Ma Table En Ville changed that significantly. It’s a small restaurant but the food was excellent, tasty and well presented. For a one night stop it may be a place to come back to.

We were off again the next morning for Nimes with a trip to Pont Du Gard along the way. Most of the trip was uneventful, though we did see from the overhead gantry signs that the A9 into Nimes was closed and that an ‘alerte rouge’ was in force. We just hit some really heavy rain as we drove onto the exit ramp for Pont Du Gard but it eased off quite quickly and we arrived in the ‘Pont’ car park under fairly sunny skies. What a spectacular sight the Pont is especially when you consider it’s practically 2,000 years old.

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Having walked over the lower part and fed the inner historian we made our way back to the car and set off for Nimes where we found out all Hell had broken loose while we sauntered round Pont Du Gard in the sunshine. Thunder, lightning, 2 months rain in 30 minutes, trees uprooted etc. Luckily our hotel and it’s car park were unaffected though our choice of restaurant was closed due to flood damage.

This morning we had an explore, taking in the ‘arenes’ or Roman arena and the Maison Carre, a Roman Temple. We found out that we couldn’t see the interior of the arenes because of the flooding and a small matter of an imminent ‘feria’ or bullfight tournament during the latter half of this week…Trust us to turn up now.

Anyway we had prebooked somewhere to eat tonight but when we got there a note had been stuck to the window to the effect that they had no electricity and couldn’t open that evening. So, back to plan A and the place from last night which had now reopened. It was a lovely meal and we are returning on Friday.

Tomorrow we are off to Arles by train…barring rockslides and bandit raids that is..