Roman times and sun

Friday 28^th March

Today we are heading South again, and finally we are seeing improvement in the weather. A frosty morning, but looking like a nice day coming.

Before hitting the road we had time for a look around Vienne. We were looking for the amphitheatre but found ourselves going round in circles, and heading up questionable roads, so we gave up on that idea and just went where the road wanted to take us – which was to a church on top of the hill that overlooked Vienne and overlooked the elusive amphitheatre. Fabulous views and well worth getting temporarily misaligned.

Vienne amphitheatre

Next stop in Vienne was the Gallo-Roman museum. This museum is on the site of an archeological dig in Vienne where they have found the remains of a town dating back to 1 AD on the banks of the Rhone river. Another fantastic museum showing the history of the town. There were a lot of mosaics displayed in the museum that have been uncovered in the dig. Inside the museum they had a lot of models and there were walkways up above so that you could look down on the model. Then outside the museum you could walk around the ‘streets’ of the town that they have exposed. How many thousand pairs of feet have passed over these roads in 2000 years?

I'm not really into company at times like this!

We again saw school groups of kids at the museum, and one group had shields and swords and the teacher was showing them battle formations.

Time to hit the road and we found a nice little bakery along the way where we were able to sit outside in the sun and eat lunch. Warming up – it hit 20C today.

We found our hotel in Orange with no trouble. So far we are doing well with hotels – not the most salubrious but for the amount of time we spend in the room they are perfectly adequate, and so far all have had free parking. They have tended to be near the motorways and I was worried about noise, but so far that has not been a problem.

Just another castle on a hill

Three nights here – time to do some washing. You must all be wondering if we brought any other clothes – we might get to wear them now that it is warming up.