Avignon Adventures!

Sunday the 3^rd of June: Avignon 

If you would like to enjoy a theme song for today as you read, listen to this song on youtube in the background:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHsER0a7MGA

The plan today was to check out the Palais des Papes, the Pont d'Avignon, take the free ferry over to the island across from the town and go for a walk and maybe do some of the two walking tours in our guidebook.

It was a cooler day than the day before (early 20s rather than 31 degrees, thank goodness), and drizzling on and off.

We headed to park beside the Pope's palace first to take in some nice views.

On our way up, the square in front of the Palace as you head up the switchback stairs towards the park.

Up in the garden there were good views of the river and the island across the way.

That bridge is the Pont d'Avignon

Then we headed down via some ramparts and stairs to the entrance of the Pont d'Avignon. The bridge was kind of interesting, including the story/legend/factual recounting of a dude (Benezet) (now sainted) who was tending his sheep in some far away place and then was told by God to come to Avignon instruct them to build a bridge over the river Rhone. At first laughed at, he managed to lift a ridiculously heavy stone, carry it some distance, and lay the foundation of the bridge. So the town leaders decided they should probably listen to him after all – I guess even if they didn't believe they were incurring the wrath of God by ignoring him, they realised they would be annoying a guy who could throw giant boulders at their heads. It was never quite established (on the audioguide anyway) why it was so important to God to have such a bridge, but it seems that in it's time it was a useful sort of bridge, albeit with the annoying habit of getting destroyed. In it's present form it retains but 3 of the 22 something arches.

The drawbridge.

"It's good to be on a bridge!"

Looking back from the end of the bridge you can see the palace and wall.

Greg on the ramparts.

More views of the Palace from the bridge, with the golden Mary standing out amongst all the harsh grey stone.

It was also interesting learning about the children's song (that I'd never heard of before but it is apparently famous) was kind of cool. Especially when the audioguide had sections of the song in various genres to listen to including 'acid jazz' and 'reggae'. You could also see enormous fish coming up to the surface to flop about amongst the river reeds so that was cool too (I wanted to post an awesome video of it, but it didn't work...)

Oh, and on the alter of one of the chapels, there was a pigeon posing for photos...

There were a few chapels build into the bridge itself. Of the two remaining, one was dedicated to St. Benezet (and for a while he was buried here but then he got relocated after various wars and religious confusions).

This one had a pigeon on the alter.

All in all an amusing if miscellaneous way to spend an hour.

Next stop was the Palace of the Popes of Avignon, via a street filled with many pretty shops that temporarily distracted.

The Palace itself while imposing was possibly the most boring sight we have been to so far. The rooms themselves are massive and impressive, but gutted by fire (so no wall/ceiling/floor coverings) and unfurnished. There were one or two rooms with restored frescoes which were pretty cool. The audioguide, which should have told interesting anecdotes and painted vivid images of what was once there, most of the time started with detailed dimensions of the each and irrelevent and uninteresting details...“The room is 22 metres long, 11 metres wide, and 6 metres high. Each stone on the floor weighed as much as an antartic polar bear cub after it has just fed. It is the same size as a duck pond that can be found in the remote town of gooblegook in Hungary. The ceiling is too high to be traversed by the average rat without falling off. The servants of the Pope would deliver to this room 12 geese, 7 pigs, 42 bushels of grain, and a handful of dustbunnies every morning for the Pope to break his fast. But often the Pope would still be hungry, and ask for an extra serving of dustbunnies. The people that would use this room were *long list* . The other things that happened here were zzzz not listening”

Actually if it had been like that, I probably would have listening. So please *insert inaccurate facts above with accurate, much more boring ones*.

The views from the top of palace were fairly spectacular, although our enjoyment of this was somewhat marred by the rain that fell as well stood there.

It's actually difficult to tell in this photo, but Greg was taking it of me to demonstrate how keen I was, climbing to a higher part of the roof to take more photos, despite the rain...

We zoomed through the Palace, not wanting something that didn't interest us that much taking up too much of our precious time.

Once out, the initial plan was to continue on the walking tour in the guide and find some lunch. We followed the walking tour as far as one nice church (which we had a little look in).

... we then abandoned the tour as we were starving and there didn't seem to be any cheap eats open in the city (it being a Sunday, many places were shut).

At some point in our meanderings that day, we found this pretty park.

So we headed to the main street which was considerably quieter on this rainy day with no shopping to be had, and found some rather sub-par filled bagettes at a chain bakery. We also found some less sub-par pastries further down. Clutching our booty we ducked back into the hotel to eat in the dinner room downstairs, where it was nice and dry. Once we were no longer Hangry we set out again.

The little kitchen for breakfast and hotel guest's use during the day.

There were some vague thoughts of getting back to the walking tour but the weather and the lack of people was making the streets of Avignon look rather abandoned and dingy, and in places downright seedy. As the rain had let up, we opted instead to take the free boat over to the island across the canal and have a walk along the park there. The boat was easy to find and the ride across was short and fun, shared with about 50 other people and a very small dog.

View of the Pont d'Avignon from the boat.

The walk didn't take longer than about 20 minutes either, and then we were at the bridge (not the Pont d'Avignon, one that actually went across the entire canal).

On our little walk along the island.

On the bridge heading back towards Avignon's old town.

We crossed back over to Old Avignon and decided to walk further around the outside of the walls, to the gate near the train station where we had first arrived the day before. There seemed to be a pedestrian path going right by the water.

Well, it turned into a bit of an adventure! At first everything was going well, the path took us passed dinner cruise boats waiting to receive their evening guests, and then it led in amongst some trees, the river just visible through them to our right (including some ducks).

Meanwhile, the sky was darkening and drops of rain began to fall again. We knew we weren't far, but as we approached the next bridge which marked where the gate opened into the city, we realised that the path was going to go under the bridge, rather than meet up nicely with the road and turn into some pedestrian friendly access. In fact, beyond the trees we seemed to be surrounded by motorways. We paused to put on our jackets. The only options were to go back – all the way back to where we had first got off the bridge – or keep going on the path and see where ended.

As the rain began to fall we passed under the bridge. There was a little concrete 'room' under the bridge full of graffitt, and it crossed my mind that in this weather, that would be a decent shelter for a homeless person. We came out from under the bridge to discover that the path abruptly ended in a grassy bushy slope leading up to the motorway in the middle of nowhere, and a man coming our way with flattened cardboard boxes under one arm and a shopping bag full of stuff in the other. He passed us by without incident but it occurred to me as the rain began to pelt down that he was a homeless man, headed for the best homeless rain shelter to be had this side of the Avignon river. Part of me felt bad for him, part of me was just relieved he didn't try to rob us, out in the middle of nowhere as we were.

Then it was time for the next adventure: crossing the busy motorway in the pouring rain. It was about the same as trying to cross the Wellington motorway, but there was an island in between the two directions of traffice and thankfully it was 'quiet' due to it being a Sunday. We made it across safely and through the gate into town – although not the gate we were hoping for.

This was the 'gate' we were hoping for. Through it you can see the train station.

Blinded by rain we were temporarily lost but then got our bearings and hurried to the safety and shelter of our hotel! The reception lady laughed when she saw us come in, drenched and a bit frazzled by the adventure “I think you are better staying here, out of the rain!” She suggested. Indeed.

I had an idea for a nice place for tea from the guide book, and it seemed to be one of the few good places actually open on a Sunday in Avignon. Bearing this in mind I knew it would probably be busy, so I decided to try and make a reservation. I was pretty sure they spoke english but I was terrified to be trying to have a phone conversation in French with no way of pointing or gesturing to help myself be understood. So I spent a few minutes on swatting up on how to say times of day in French and “I'd like to make a reservation” etc. Then took a deep breath and tried to phone them – noting the outside line number of the hotel. I tried four times, with different variations of the number (with area code, without, etc.). Every time it sounded like it wasn't working or engaged. I was nervous about the whole thing and frustrated that I had no idea what a ringing sound on a French telephone should sound like! We resolved just to go there really early and hopefully get a set.

Then we relaxed and tried to dry off for an hour or so. When it was time, we headed out.

Rather guttingly, we missed out on the restaurant by a few minutes only – they had just given their last unbooked table away. Most people had a reservation. ><

So we wandered, disapointed and with no plan B. Luckily, we came across a nice enough place with friendly waiters, nice indoor ambience, and rather good food. This was the restaurant of the “I asked if you were French and you said 'dessert please' “ incident, if you saw my remark on facebook..

Craving some vegies - we weren't disappointed!

Feeling a bit sheepish we nevertheless enjoyed our dessert...

Feeling reasonably pleased with ourselves about our satisfactory end to the initial culinary disaster, we headed back to base once again for an early night, because the next day was to be a long one!