Stuck

Backblipping an unexpected evening walk in Nîmes. It's a long story. I was back in France for choir practice at the weekend. From there, I was heading to Nottingham. This plan was rather short notice, and there didn't seem to be any sensible flights. I ended up deciding to take the TGV and Eurostar. After a tiring weekend, I was rather looking forward to spending the day on a series of comfortable trains.

It didn't work out like that. An electrical fault knocked out all the TGVs in south-east France, and I was unceremoniously dumped in Nîmes. Let's gloss over the four hours spent in a draughty waiting room watching the hours of delay clicking up on the board. Once it was obvious that I wouldn't get to Lille in time for the last Eurostar of the day, let alone the one I'd booked, I decided I'd rather be stuck in Nîmes at 5pm than Lille-Europe at 11pm. So I went to the ticket office and changed my Lille ticket to the next day, and found a cheapish hotel near the station.

Once settled in, I proceeded to rebook all the other bits of my journey. At vast expense in the case of the Eurostar. Ouch. I checked my email for all the confirmations, downloaded tickets where necessary, and that's when my computer went "Ding!" :: click :: and died. That sound that means a hard disk failure.

It was time for a drink. I went for a stroll through Nîmes in the twilight. I haven't been there for years and it's definitely shaped up from its previous scruffiness. Here's the Arena in the moonlight. The Maison Carrée was looking very fine too, as was the new Musée de la Romanité. There might be some extras later, but not while I'm using the tablet.

A pizza, salad, and glass of wine were all welcome before I walked back to the hotel. More backblips will follow now that I'm back in Spain and can use the tablet.