Is Nimes suitable for a two-week home base with occasional excursions ?

Hi,
First off, there is some middle room between emoving every 2 days and staying somewhere two weeks. What about 1 week in 2 locations?

But let's stick with your 2 weeks in one place. Do you have a car? If not, Avignon makes the most sense. The center is charming and you would only pass through the ugly bits so no worries. The center is quite sizeable! Also, "horrible concrete mess" is a tad exaggerated, it's just a sprawling town.
Then Nîmes and Arles are also somewhat convenient for public transport connections.
Anywhere else is not workable.

Regarding Arles, it is somewhat gritty, yes. Grimy, no. Charming, absolutely, enchanting, even. As for Saint Rémy, it's even the opposite of grimy: it's very pretty, almost too manicured for me. A worthwhile place to stay with a car. While Nîmes... Much improved rcently, but certainly not as polished as Bordeaux. I wouldn't say the vibe is vastly different from Avignon.

So with a car, you could stay in Nîmes one week and Saint Rémy the other, to get a taste of a smaller town. And without, either Avignon the whole time, or a split between Nîmes and Avignon?

Thank you Baiso for your reply. I really have been wracking my brains out trying to get this thing together. I will be relying totally on public transportation. I thought of dividing my trip into two segments but then I thought the inconvenience would not be now worth it especially if I find a really nice place I can call home for the entire two weeks. (I did find a pretty nice place in Bordeaux in April, which I could have stayed for much longer).

I haven't exactly found the place I can "call home," as I'm sensitive to heat and so am looking for a place with charm with A/C, which has not been easy to find.

I have heard from a few people that they have been able to use Uzes or San Remy as a home base, but that they swallowed the bullet but were still able to see a few places--maybe not Place du Gard--though of, of course, not convenient without a car.

The villages have the most appeal to me, anyway, and I would be able to walk around. I just couldn't be real adventurous and go to Les Baux, etc. I just want to know whether I could get to San Remy and/or Arles from Uzes without having to spend 6 days RT. I've looked at schedules online but I know that the infrequent buses do not operate when school is out (in this region it would be Oct. 10-24, I believe).

I would consider Nimes, Avignon but not Aix (not far too to the west without a car) as a home basis. I'm not into shopping, much tourist sightseeing, or fine dining, either. Just a simple 2 weeks, reading, relaxing, meditating. It may seem odd and it's certainly off-the-beaten track, but that is exactly what I'm look for. No crowds! No noise, or as little as possible. No nightlife is fine by me.

What is astonishing is that a place like Les Baux, which has a population within the old center of 22, receives 300,000 visitors a year (according to Dennis Callan). Maybe one advantage of a larger place like NImes or even Arles is that perhaps the tourists would be spread out over a larger area.
Being among tourists is inevitable I guess as the world's population has increased by what I guess is 2 billion in two or three decades "Tourisme de masse," as the French say.

We are staying in Nimes next month. Accommodations are very reasonable. We are paying 80$ a night for a beautiful apartment across the street from the Maison Carree. We are attending the Elton John show in the arena. Happy to share our apartment information with you.

What about 1 week in 2 locations?

That's pretty good advice. We spent a week in Nimes at an apartment a few years ago. The biggest problem is that we didn't have a car; we returned it when we arrived in Nimes. There is bus service to outlying towns, but it's not great. The center of Nimes is very nice, but you get out of the center fairly quickly, and the outskirts are not attractive. All in all, though, it's not a bad place to spend some time, but I'd consider splitting it with something like Saint Remy (where we've stayed twice for a week each time). And if you don't have a car, Avignon is a good location, although I didn't like the city.

Being from the west side of Chicago, gritty and grimy don't bother me. I have visited extensively Nimes, Arles and Avignon and have no complaints about any. Would you think about Montpellier as a change from any of the three? For many reasons, among them its being a university city, there is an entirely different ambiance. With its excellent transport, this might make a nice change for you while keeping maximum excursion possibilities.

You mentioned going in the fall: A/C in mid to late October is not a necessity even for heat sensitive folks, as night-time temperatures start to dip significantly by then. And even daytime temps are very unlikely to exceed 80F - the all-time high in Nîmes in October is less than 90.
Foregoing AC will greatly expand your accomodation horizons.

You mentioned going in the fall: A/C in mid to late October is not a necessity even for heat sensitive folks.

I'm going in mid to late September. I don't want to chance it bumping into 80 degree weather even, esp. if it's a loft apartment. I think I may have found an apartment with A/C. You can't always have it both ways. French buildings rarely have soundproofing between floors so you really hear the person above walking or stomping across his/her floor, which has driven me mad in the past. At least with the top floor of a building you won't hear that. I'd consider going in October but I believe the school vacation begins on October 10 and lasts for 2 weeks.

That's pretty good advice. We spent a week in Nimes at an apartment a few years ago. The biggest problem is that we didn't have a car; we returned it when we arrived in Nimes. There is bus service to outlying towns, but it's not great. The center of Nimes is very nice, but you get out of the center fairly quickly, and the outskirts are not attractive. All in all, though, it's not a bad place to spend some time, but I'd consider splitting it with something like Saint Remy (where we've stayed twice for a week each time). And if you don't have a car, Avignon is a good location, although I didn't like the city.

Actually, that is what I thought of suddenly last night: split the 2 weeks into one week in Nimes, the other in San-Remy, Arles, or Uzes, etc. After which I'd go back to Paris for several weeks before flying back to Seattle.

Do you think that Avignon would be considerably better as a transportation hub (a lot of people don't like it, it seems) than Nimes? Apparently there is a bus from Avignon to San Remy but not from Nimes to San Remy.

I have done little "research" on Avignon, either lodgings or the sights. I know a lot of people think the papal palace a bust because it's empty. But I think that Nimes is actually larger than Avignon.

IT IS. 150,000 vesus 92,000! (Just checked). Maybe staying a week in Avignon, not Nimes, would be better.

To be honest France as a whole is kind of grimy and the Mediterranean region(not only of France, but all around the Mediterranean Sea) is grimy as well. It's part of her charme.

Agreed. except for the part of being part of her charm. Even Bordeaux was gritty/grimy, part of it having to do with the fact that so much of the city seemed to be being torn up, even in chic neighborhoods, not just the area around St. Michel. Part of it is the fact that these are very old cities, France is such a densely populated country, with older cities and towns having narrow sidewalks...and, sorry, the dogs (I'm not fond of dogs; cats, yes, dogs, no). Greece was kind of gritty/grimy, but Italy was surprisingly free of the dog part. Very very crowded and very old, of course, like France.

I did not consider Nimes to be any more charming than Arles or Avignon and it would not pop into my mind as a retreat. The number of panhandlers felt high. However, the market hall was very good and the Esplanade Charles de Gaulle at one end and Jardins de la Fontaine at the other are nice public spaces. I was there before the new museum opened. As noted in Rick's guidebook, a lot of restaurants are open for an extended lunch period but not at typical dinner times. Driving into and out of the city requires navigating a lot of one-way streets, suburban traffic, and round-abouts.

Do you think that Avignon would be considerably better as a transportation hub (a lot of people don't like it, it seems) than Nimes?

Having used public transportation in both places, I would say that Avignon is a much better transportation hub.

I've decided to go with Avignon. From there Arles and maybe even St. Remy or Uzes as day trips.

We are staying in Nimes next month. Accommodations are very reasonable. We are paying 80$ a night for a beautiful apartment across the street from the Maison Carree. We are attending the Elton John show in the arena. Happy to share our apartment information with you.

Richard,
If you could share the apt. info with me...
Thanks.

Don't kill yourself to get to Uzes, only if you have time and seen everything else.

I disagree. I think Uzes is fantastic.

I actually had only 36 hours in Rome on the RS Best of Italy tour because I broke my ankle in Assisi, so my assessment of the "dog part" in Rome is really, at best, tentative. But in the rest of Italy, it seemed like there really weren't that many dogs, which surprised me (and was fine by me, too), especially compared to Paris and most of France. I'd go back to Rome to see the Forum where supposedly there are lots of cats that are taken care of. For that matter, I think I'd have a good time in Japan, as well, where cats are, if not worshiped, highly "regarded."

One thing that still astonishes me is how people in places like Paris manage to keep up with laundering, considering how "un-scrubbed" everything is, compared to northern Europe, in general. You see people in Siena, or Paris, sitting on the ground all the time!

I try to wear practical, non-rip, dri clothing that I get from REI, etc., dark gray, etc. I'm not in France to be a fashionista (or a foodie)!

Here is link for the Nîmes apartment.

https://abnb.me/NCEzWBivLW

Richard

Thanks Richard. It was already on my saved list but I decided against it. It still is very cosy with a great location!

The owner of that apartment is amazing. We arrive there a week before our stay in Nîmes. He is meeting us at the rail station to give us a key so we can get in the day we arrive. He is going to be away at a wedding. Plus he will show us where the apartment is in everything so when we arrive we won’t have any issues. That’s killer customer service

I'm a sucker for Old-World architecture (as well as that of the Far East)...there's a video of Nimes on Youtube that showed an amazing boulevard with blocks of beautiful architecture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB_dj0GDYtk&t=210sEven under gray skies:

The least we can do as tourists is to support efforts to stop bulldozing of historic quarters...even though in the Sixties that's what the French did to their own cultural heritage--granted there is a housing crunch which led to the suburban "cite," so ghastly in the periphery around places like Paris, Nice, probably most cities there.

I spent a bit under 2 weeks in the south of France two years ago including visits to Nimes and staying in Avignon (old walled town). And my impression of Nimes is that it is a mini Paris or London in that it has a mix of old and new with some historical buildings scattered around,
Frankly the old lead part of Avignon has more charm. (The new part of Avignon not so much). We stayed in the old town about a block from the main sq and about two blocks from the popes palace and it was in a nice old hotel. We walked the town a bit and ate in the square a couple nights and had a very nice time.
Nimes was harder to deal with as it is a more busy modern city,
But in either case you have a reasonable amount of places to go within striking distance. Heck the Riviera is within day trip of either location. And of course the famed aqueduct and the Pope’s palace and the Colosseum in Nimes itself.

So I image you can find a fair amount to do.