Café des Beaux-Arts is the kind of unhurried French café that the centre of Nîmes still does well — old wooden chairs on a paved terrace, decent espresso, paper menus, regulars who treat it as a second living room. The Place aux Herbes setting beside the cathedral is one of the prettiest in the city.
Stop for a coffee and a pain au chocolat on the way to the cathedral and the Musée du Vieux Nîmes; come back for a glass of rosé on the way home.