Summer holiday 2006
le Cap D´Agde − France


Thuesday, 1th August

Today I am going to pay a visit to the city off Nimes, to the colosseum to be precise. This is the one thing I do not want to miss out on, I need to see this monument from the Roman era. I have been looking out for this opportunity for quite some time now. The traffic today is very dense and when I am about half way to Nimes I pull over for some gas. With a scorching sun in the sky above me, it is already quite warm. I brought with me two bottles of water, both frozen solid. Around one of them I wrapped a towel, which will keep it isolated and very cold for a long time. The other one I have next to me for immediate use.

When I reach the outskirts of Nimes I start looking for signs indicating where to take an exit for the inner city. After a while I reach the center of town and there, underneath an immensely large square that I pass by, I can see the entrance of a subterranean parking. Unfortunately I am on the wrong side of the road, so I have to take a round trip through the town centre again. Then at last, I can park the car and start looking around for the colosseum.

When I am topside again, I can see a part of the colosseum beyond the corner of a building. Under a bright burning sun and a cloudless sky I make my way to this intriguing marvel of Roman engineering. Here, surrounded by buildings of more contemporary ages, the colosseum stands tall even after more then nineteen hundred years. At the entrance I take my place in the queue and wait till I can buy an admission ticket.

The ticket office is inside the colosseum. It is situated in one of the narrow corridors that lead to the large arena in the centre. The pillars and the arches, the walls, everything here is constructed from these large hand carved blocks of sand stone. The scarcely illuminated corridors with their low ceilings tell tales of days that have long gone by. It is quite impressive, and I can easily imagine how in its early days this building would have been a busy beehive filled with people that wandered around trying to find a seat, waiting for the spectacle in the arena to begin. Most of the time this would be a terribly bloody and gruesome spectacle followed with the death of some of the contenders.

I climb the stone stairs that lead upwards to the first upper level, take a turn left and I find myself standing under one of the many arches that support the thick outside wall overlooking the street with the traffic below. I turn around and walk through one of the narrow corridors towards the inner of the building. At the end of the corridor daylight flows in. When I exit the narrow passage a view across the wide arena unfolds before me. It is truly a huge building! Standing here on one of the very many rows that make this building what it is, I can at last appreciate its full glory. I remember that a brochure mentioned that about 23 to 24 thousand people could find a seat here. And this building is only a small copy of the colosseum in Rome. That building can hold about 80 thousand people. Imaging that! In the centre of the arena a lot of people are busy constructing a stage for a musical concert. The arena is obviously still being used today.

I look down over dozens of rows, to the centre of the arena, and I feel kind of lost in the vast space that is contained within this building. When I look behind me even dozens of more rows lead upward. I turn back into the main corridor and look for a passage to the top rows. After a while I do find a corridor that leads upwards again. Following this corridor brings me to the top-level seats of the arena. Overlooking the arena from this point is without any doubt a spectacular view! I climb on top of the colosseum’s outside wall, and notice its formidable thickness, almost a meter. From here I have a birds-eye view across the whole of Nimes. Al this climbing in this heat made me perspire quite a bit, so I sit down for a while and enjoy the panoramic view across Nimes while my soaked t-shirt dries in the warm wind.

Having seen what I wanted to see, I return to the parking again in order to return to Cap d’Agde. When I reach the car, I find that the bottle of frozen water that I left behind hours ago is still frozen solid. Wrapping the bottle in a towel worked really well, this in spite of the high temperature. Finding my way through the crowed streets I leave Nimes behind me and within ten minutes I reach the freeway where I pull an admission ticket and head for Montpellier and then Beziers. The car’s air-conditioning system quickly dries my shirt and cools the interior of the car down to a comfortable 21 degrees Celsius. I arrive at Cap D’Agde around 16:30 PM.