I have been postponing writing this post for months as I feel like as long as I don't write it, I can savor its memory in my mind:)
One place I had dreams of visiting always was Soithern France at the time when the lavender fields are in full bloom. After ironing out all our scheduling conflicts we decided we would FLY to the Provance area over the Fourth of July weekend since we would have four free days. We had hoped to take one last driving trip through central France to the south but Robert had to cover the dental clinic as Dr S was getting marrried and Dr T was attending the wedding and traveling afterwards (and we had already shipped our minivan). In any case, we were tight on time, so we had to use every minute possible for this trip.
We left our house shortly around 3 am, to make the drive to Stansted and to get on the 6 am flight.
The nice thing about traveling with older kids is that half of the time you can actually close your eyes and rest on the plane or even read a book!:) The kids usually get occupied with their own books or DS or whatever...but they never sleep unless it's a late night flight.
We arrived to Nimes, France shortly after 9:30 am, got the rental car and headed north towards Collias, a town on river Gardon. Collias is where you can rent kayaks (with Canoe Collias company) and spend a few hours kayaking down the river towards Pont de Gard, the famous aqueduct bridge. There are actually a few routes you can take, but that's the one we chose.
It was around 11:30 when we finally got into our kayaks. We hired four kayks (I think?). The big kids each had one and then one of us had a double one and another single one. We started our 8 km journey, hoping the clouds would fly away and that we would see sunshine:)
We didn't get far though as we were starving (it was already after noon in England and we had an early morning start). It's a good thing we had stopped by at a grocery store to buy some baguette and cheese and veggies for a yummy lunch.
The beauty of this river is that you could just float down the river and stop wherever you desired along the banks and have a break, play, swim or eat lunch.
Getting our lunch ready. I mean watching Robert get our lunch ready.
This little dude was determined to try kayaking on his own again. And he was great.
Katya and Alex usually went way too fast and then had to wait for us to catch up as we would disappear out of their sight.
Another fun stop to swim. After noon, the weather really brightened up and the sun was shining making us feel incredibly happy to be in Southern France in July. We couldn't believe we weren't feeling cold:)!
Kids jumped off this rock, swam around, splashed around and then kept going.
Finally, we reached the bridge! Mark with the paddle is my favorite.
Built in the first century AD by the Romans to carry water from a spring in Usez to the Roman colony of Nimes, this bridge stands 160 ft tall, still amazing people today that it remained intact even after the Roman Empire collapsed.
One of the reasons why it's in such good shape is because throughout the centuries, lords and bishops have been responsible for its upkeep as they used it as a toll bridge. So they would make money from people needing to cross the bridge by imposing levy.
As you can see, it's a popular spot to stop and swim and hang out.
Lots of tourists get a different view from the top of the bridge (you can walk up there).
But we preferred this one.
Isn't it amazing to be kayaking right under it?
This was not the end of our 8 km route. We still had about 2 km to go.
So we stopped for a while longer to let the kids jump off the mini-cliffs on the banks of this river.
Some other crazy teenagers were jumping off REALLY tall cliffs, even from the area where it says to not climb;).
Kayaking under the Pont de Gard was one of those experiences that we'll never forget. I love doing stuff like that as it simply enhances the whole trip. We love to combine nature and active things, and this was the perfect thing to do.
We got to the final stop along the river around 3:30 or 4 pm. We had to wait a little bit for the bus that comes to pick people up from this last stop and brings them back to where we started. We were tired and full of sunshine, but so happy. After quickly getting changed, we drove for another hour and a half to Roussillon, the town where we were staying for three nights.
To Be Continue.
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