Orange - not just a fruit

Ever in pursuit of more Roman relics, we set off on a day trip to Orange today.

But before we even got far from the gite, we had to get through our first bit of drama for the day. Let me set the scene - I had agreed with Simon that I would do some of the driving in France and Italy, and given we were in a rural area I thought this would be a good place to start. However there were several little alarm bells that probably should have tipped us off that this wasn't a great plan. Firstly, I haven't driven a vehicle of any kind (does sitting at the front of the DLR pretending to drive it count?) in over 18 months. Secondly, I haven't driven a manual car in about seven years (and yes, the Juke was a manual). And the last and probably most crucial factor - I had never driven on the "wrong" side of the road before. I reversed the car from the car park and drove down the long driveway without taking out any flower pots or local dogs, so although I was feeling nervous we decided I'd take her out on the open road. Things were going okay for a while and I was pottering along with Simon constantly telling me to "move over" as I veered towards the right. Then a car came zooming up behind me and I got a bit panicked, driving even further to the right and riding into the dirt on the side of the road. Again this would have been fine, except the place I swerved into happened to have an exposed metal pipe - instant double tyre blow-out, brilliant!

Ever one to stay calm in a crisis, I resorted to holding my head and repeating "oh my god". Simon, being more the nervous type, got out the emergency contact details and immediately got to calling Hertz. We really need to give credit where due to Hertz at this point - we got through to someone straight away and he said he'd send a tow truck within an hour who would take us and car somewhere we could collect a new car, potentially Avignon, which we were intending to visit anyway. Sounded okay to us. But not more than 40 minutes after the call a super-efficient tow truck driver turned up with a brand-new Insignia - he rolled it off, gave us a new contract and hauled away the Juke in the space of about five minutes. We couldn't be happier with the service and were on the road again. No, I was not driving but Simon was pretty happy he had scored a nice shiny upgraded car, so all's well that ends well!

Anyway, onto Orange. The big draw-card for the city (town? It wasn't that big) is the Roman amphitheatre, the best preserved in Europe and one of the most impressive in the world. We headed straight there for a look. I have to say, I was completely blown away - I knew it was going to be big, but the scale of it was unbelievable - the back of the theatre is about the size of a five-storey building. so actors on the stage must have looked tiny when compared to their backdrop. It even has most of the statue of Emperor Augustus still there - he stood right in the middle of the whole thing, all part of the cult of the Emperor thing. It is mostly the underlying rock on show now, but it is so well-preserved it was easy to imagine the beautiful coloured marble façade it would have sported nearly 2,000 years ago, with dozens of columns, and alcoves filled with statues. The semi-circular seating arrangement was no less impressive, reaching up nearly as high as the stage - it seated thousands of people. Seating was arranged according to social status - the city's officials, nobles and visiting dignitaries sat on temporary, plush seating at the front. Merchants and other middle-class sat in the next rows, and so on until you got to the slaves, prostitutes and city layabouts who were at the back. Like gladiatorial contests, the theatre entertainment was free for the people, and there were up to 100 days off to enjoy the shows per year. There was all kinds of theatre - improvisation, comedies and dramas so something for everyone really.

While we were there we got to sample the great acoustics of the theatre first hand - during summer they host concerts there (amazing to think a lot of these Roman sites are still used for the their original purpose centuries later) and this day, the Straits (a band including a couple of former Dire Straits members) were playing, so they were doing their sound check while we walked around. I wonder what the Romans would have made of Sultans of Swing? I think they would have liked it.

Once we'd done our Roman duty for the day we wandered around the old city for a bit. We bought some of the local sweets - callisons - to have later. They are small diamond-shaped marzipan sweets with pastel-coloured icing on top, pretty tasty. Given the dramas of the day we decided against heading to Avignon and drove back to the gite to enjoy a few well-earned drinks and watch the sun set over the mountains in the distance - very enjoyable.