{"id":38,"date":"2014-09-07T23:07:07","date_gmt":"2014-09-07T21:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.wordpress.com\/?p=38"},"modified":"2014-09-07T23:07:07","modified_gmt":"2014-09-07T21:07:07","slug":"saint-guilhem-le-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.com\/?p=38","title":{"rendered":"Saint-Guilhem-le-D\u00e9sert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">My first little <em>voyage<\/em> in Southern France to Saint-Guilhem proved to be a nice start to warm up my travel muscles and make me excited for more to come. It is a small village by the H\u00e9rault River that is part of the French <strong>Chemin de St. Jacques<\/strong> (<em>St. James Way<\/em>) to Santiago de Compostella in Spain.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">As expected in September, Mediterranean weather did not disappoint, and we strolled into the nearby mountains first for a quick hike before exploring the village.<\/p>\n<p>For me, the highlight was the river surrounded by rocks and moutains, shimmering in a deep blue color with the <strong>Pont du Diable<\/strong> blending perfectly into the scene. Unfortunately, the <strong>Grotte de Clamouse<\/strong> was closed when we arrived, but we got over it as we sunbathed by a nearby lake and watched as people jumped from the cliffs or engaged in kayak races.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-477\" src=\"https:\/\/maponmyplate.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/09\/img_08631.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"img_0863\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-large wp-image-480 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/maponmyplate.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/09\/img_08681.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"img_0868\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_873\" style=\"width: 450px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-873\" class=\"wp-image-873\" src=\"https:\/\/maponmyplate.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/09\/rsz_img_0884.jpg?w=768\" alt=\"rsz_img_0884\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-873\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">le Pont du Diable<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-486\" src=\"https:\/\/maponmyplate.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/09\/img_08911.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"img_0891\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1341\" src=\"https:\/\/maponmyplate.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/09\/img_5268.jpg\" alt=\"img_5268\" width=\"400\" height=\"598\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1342\" src=\"https:\/\/maponmyplate.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/09\/img_5275.jpg?w=768\" alt=\"img_5275\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">The <strong>Pont du Gard<\/strong> or <strong>Devil&#8217;s Bridge<\/strong> was built by monks more than 1000 years ago where the H\u00e9rault Gorges open out, making it the oldest Romanesque bridge in France. It got its name from a story where the devil sabotaged the construction of the bridge each night, until <em>St. Guilhem<\/em> made a pact with him and promised him the first soul that crossed the completed bridge. The devil agreed but clever Guilhem sent a stray dog across the bridge on the day it opened, which made the enraged devil jump into the river.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My first little voyage in Southern France to Saint-Guilhem proved to be a nice start to warm up my travel muscles and make me excited for more to come. It is a small village by the H\u00e9rault River that is part of the French Chemin de St. Jacques (St. James Way) to Santiago de Compostella&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[442],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/rsz_img_0887.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maponmyplate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}