Today we were moving from Montpellier to Nimes an hour north. Since we had found some gorgeous shops yesterday when they were all closed I had logged them into my Google Maps and looked at their opening times so we could be as quick as possible. We had to clean the place we were staying in before we left so we ended up being packed up at about 10am and our parking on the street 10 minutes away finished at 1030am. We walked some of our bags to the car and then drove it back to Place de la Comedie car parking where we transferred all the rest of our stuff down into the car before heading out shopping. We stopped off at a cool men's shop called Hemisphere and despite finding some cool stuff Lew wasn't in the shopping mood. He did catch up on the phone with one of his good friends Samuel whilst I went and tried some clothes on in a shop called American Vintage. Most of the size XS were still huuuge and it seems the fashion these days is to wear baggy clothes? I do love the fashion most of these French girls wear but they never look like they have oversized clothes on. But I did find this very French silk jacket and was set on it until I realised it was €130 ($217 NZD)! I dragged lew off the phone to check he didn't think it was ridiculous or looked strange before buying it. We made our way to the female store of Hemisphere which I didn't find anything I liked. There was one more called Magestic which is only in Montpellier and they had really good prices. It's very weird in all these places they changing rooms don't have mirrors and they also have signs saying no selfies. Lew thinks that maybe they have issues with fashion bloggers who just try the clothes on, take photos and then don't purchase anything. Still it is embarrassing coming out to the communal mirror with the shop assistant watching you. I did find some cute pants and top for €65 ($108 NZD) and Lew brought a sweater for €35 ($58 NZD). It's not that we can really afford to shop but we don't actually have many clothes with us overall and Averill keeps telling us we should bring souvenirs home. Do clothes count?! Before we knew it, it was midday already and the falafel place we wanted to try was closed. We didn't have much time since we were meeting our next Airbnb host at 1.30pm and it was just over an hours drive. We decided to sort lunch in Nimes and went back to pick up the car. They had charged us a hefty €5.50 ($9.20NZD) for parking for two hours but we have come to agree it's just the way it is. The drive to Nimes went well with dare I say it no arguing what so ever! I had packed all the snack we had left so whilst Lew drove I ate pistachio nuts and fed him mandarins. The parking we had been told to use was under the main town church called Eglise Saint Baudile, and after driving almost a full circle around the church we were able to find it. By this stage it was about 1.40pm and we didn't realise but it was about a 10 minute walk still to the apartment. We felt bad for being a bit late and hoped our host wasn't in her work lunch break or something. It was easy to find and Dominique took us up the three flights of steep stairs to the top floor apartment. It had two locks on it, one at normal height and another down by your feet which we found a bit strange. She showed us around and it is an absolute steal for $74.30 NZD per night. It has a full kitchen with a proper oven so I have plans to finally do some baking! The view was over the red terracotta roof tops with the church poking up in the distance was just beautiful. Dominique only spoke French with a very very small amount of English so we hadn't a clue what she was saying as she showed us around the house. When she started trying to talk to us we pulled our out Google Translator app (no they are not sponsoring us for this !!) and let her speak into it whilst it translated it to English for us. We were able to do the same thing back and it spoke to her in the French worlds we cannot say! I don't know how they did it back in the day where you actually had to speak the language!!  Once we had said our goodbyes we walked back to the parking structure to get the car and drive it back to outside the apartment. It was a narrow street with no car parks other than one disabled park outside our place. We hated doing this but we pulled up leaving one of us in the car and our hazards on as we took turns hauling our bags up the three flights of stairs. We only stayed about 5 minutes and then carried on to a small town called Uzes 30 minutes drive away. 

We have decided to terminate the Google Maps app once we get into the outskirts of town and find a park there since we often get caught bang smack in the middle of town with tiny streets and this causes many argument. For the first time we actually found some parking on the outskirts of town, and by that I mean 5 minutes walk away from the town centre since it's so small. We got into the main ring road of the city and I realised that I had left my list of things to do back in my computer. Although because it was a Monday there wasn't much open at all and we walked the ring road coming across the former Roman Catholic Church and now the Uzes Cathedral called La Cathedrale Saint-Theodorit. We are kinda all church'ed and chateau'ed out so we didn't bother trying to get in. There wasn't much else in the map other than some medieval gardens which we were keen on until they were going to charge us! By this stage we still hadn't had lunch and it was about 4pm. The hackles were starting to come out and every pizza or potential food place we walked by was closed. We came across this one patisserie which was selling these nice looking pizza breads that Lew got but there wasn't anything for me other than some stale looking baguettes. We sat down outside and I noticed these large meringues in the window with a photo of a little girl eating one. I decided that for €2.50 ($4.20 NZD) that was going to be my lunch! Sorry Dad I know it's all sugar and egg whites and won't probably be any good for my teeth. I managed about half of it as we walked back to the car guessing that was probably all to see anyways other than their Wednesday market which I have heard people come from far and wide for.   

It was about 4.30pm at this stage and we thought we should see the Pont du Gard which was on our way back into Nimes. However, the car was running low on petrol and the Pont du Gard closed at 6pm so we wouldn't have much time to look around before it closed since it would take about 30 minutes to get there. Stopping off a big supermarket complex to get fuel we decided just to do our big shop since we needed dinner and snacks for the next wee while. We had given up getting to the Pont du Gard before it closed. Once again we spent a good 1.5 hours walking around the supermarket trying to find what we needed. I had decided I wanted to bake a lemon loaf out of my NZ cook book from home (don't worry I'm not carting it around with me Iv photographed and typed all these sorts of things and they are on my laptop) . This meant I had to buy a loaf tin, baking paper and the staple items baking powder, flour and sugar. They sell their sugar in the strangest packaging and they look like they are fruit juice since they come in bottles. It took forever to work out what the plain cocoa was since most of the stuff was prepackaged cookies you could make. This was so that I could make Lews favourite dessert of his mums chocolate self saucing pudding. He complained it took so long finding all of these ingredients but I can imagine the look on his face when I pull it out of the oven one night! Once again Lew searched isles and isles for fresh milk and I found it easier to find my oat milk. Our trolley was overflowing and we had enough to make burgers for dinner and enchiladas tomorrow night so we found a checkout. We figured it was going to cost a lot of money but consoled ourselves on the fact that it would cost us far more to eat out for all our meals than buy them. It wasn't actually too bad at €95 ($160 NZD) but we had to buy another grocery bag since we never planned to get this much! We seem to be accumulating reusable bags with certain tourist icons on it since this had the Pont du Gard. 6.30pm we began driving back to Nimes and figured we could try and see the Pont du Gard on the way back as Lew had read you could see it for free by walking the biking track by the river. Arriving in the area you can just see the kind of tourist trap it is during the day as yet again they funnel you into paid parking which costs a fortune and then they make you pay an entrance fee. It was all closed and we noticed another car parked off on a dirt side road a little way back and parked behind him. The sun was beginning to set at this stage so we knew the lighting would be insane if we could get to see it. All the shops and parking were closed up but there was a gate on the side that you could just walk through. 5 minutes walk later we turned a corner and the Pont Du guard came into view with the sun setting behind it. It is a Roman aquaduct built for bringing water into the city in 40-60 AD They built it to exactly 1 inch descent over the span To make sure the water flowed. It was quite the stunning time to visit it with hardly anyone around other than the odd dog walker. We walked underneath it and looked back in the city behind with the redness of the setting sun on the stone buildings in the distance. After admiring the view and feeling rather pleased at our discovery/knocking something else off our todo list we walked back to the car. We thought we should probably put our headlamps we took to climb Mt Rinjani in the car for impromptu expeditions such as this! Luckily with our fast walking we were able to navigate back in the waning light. 

There was the option to park the car in the parking building again but we decided to do a drive by and drop all our groceries off and look for a park on the street. I ran the groceries up the stairs getting a short work out in! It was dark and it turns out the light switch only has a set amount of time till it turns off. Of course I had got one lock open but the other to do when it went pitch black and I didn't have my phone on me. I was tempted to walk back down the steep stairs to the switch at the bottoms but thought better of it and fiddled around in the dark with the 5 different keys we were giving. Thankfully none of the neighbours came out thinking I was breaking in. Once we locked up again presuming we would have to go to the main carpark we drove up the road. Luckily for us there was one just up the road that Lew didn't have to precariously manoeuvre the car into! Plus we could see it from our window which was a bonus since we hadn't a clue if it was free. We looked for a money machine and also on the dashboards of cars but there didn't seem to be any residents exemption. It was about 8pm and we still had dinner to cook. Potatoes take the longest so I worked on getting the homemade fries in the oven first. Lew had refused to buy pre-made patties as they looked nasty so the only option was to make them like we usually do .

Lew hand cut some courgettes and carrots since they didn't have a grater and we made our own  breadcrumbs by overcooking some toast. We didn't want to buy typical supermarket buns also as the bread tastes like it does in America and is very sweet. We opted for some ciabatta rolls and just made tiny burgers instead. At 9.30pm we ate which probably much to late but what can you do! When homemade burgers and fries are requested and your packing the day full it happens. After dinner we tidied up and then decided we should into booking our trip back to the UK from Lyon especially since we left it so late to book our train from Paris and ended up paying a lot more than it should have been. All up for us to take a train from Lyon to Paris, another from Paris to St Pancras station in London, and then another from London to Oxford cost us €144 ($241 NZD). We head straight up on Saturday 18th November to stay with Ollie in Oxford. We left the day after we originally were going to as there is a hockey game in Lyon for the top French leagues on that evening that we will take Nick and his gf to :) another late night and semi unplanned day tomorrow. I was thinking a day trip to Avignon?