avignon

after barcelona, we took a train to avignon in southern france:

it's about a four hour train ride and the scenery is pleasant going through the french countryside. 

(this is when the train stopped for about twenty minutes. it was a little disconcerting not knowing what they were saying over the intercom, but no one looked that stressed so we assumed it was fine. turned out that there was a train workers' strike and everyone had to get off at nimes (rick steves learning moment; this is where denim was invented, get it fabric "de nimes?" and we took a rambling hour long bus ride into avignon that gave us a great view of all the vineyards in the area. avignon sits right along the rhone river, of cotes du rhone wine fame. during the 1300's it was also where seven succeeding popes lived.)

we finally arrived at the avignon city center and walked over to the bed and breakfast that we would be staying at. i really love bed and breakfasts because it's nice to stay at a "home" type place and i like how they make you breakfast. we stayed with a lovely host in a beautiful home and were the only guests there for a couple of nights. so interesting getting to talk with her. i loved how she peppered her speech with "voila." (i.e., "you turn the corner and voila, a very good restaurant.") every morning we had warm croissants with cheese, yogurt, fruit, and coffee:

 the key to our room, "nacre" means pearl. j liked the key so much he later found and bought another at a flea market.

 a stall at the les halles market that sold nothing but spices. the shopkeeper is an actual spice girl! {guffaw}

according to the b and b proprietor, avignon is most popular in the summertime. wintertime, as it turns out, is a tourist low season and it was very quiet during our five day stay. we didn't have a car so we were at the mercy of the public transit system, but we saw lots of wonderful landmarks that were at most about an hour's bus ride away with virtually no other tourists. just lots of quiet outdoors, which is my favorite.

fontaine de vaucluse: giant spring of water that seems to come from nowhere, surrounded by giant cliffs and a castle on the side of the cliffs. jacques costeau tried to hit the bottom of the spring and nearly died.

(look what i learned to do in ppt!)

pont du gard: roman aqueduct from 40-60 AD

 

 pope's palace: do you see the golden Jesus up top?

 le marche de noel: christmas market

 arles: van Gogh spent about a year in this town and many of his paintings are of scenes from Arles. We took a self-guided walking tour that brought us to 7-8 of his works. Here's the cafe terrace one.

the food was tasty and reasonably priced in avignon. i think it probably goes without saying that the wine is really good and really cheap. it's puzzling to them when you don't order a glass with your meal. "red, white, pink?" asked the waitress at the morroccan restaurant. as a cheap alternative, we ate a lot of kebab sandwiches, called "galettes" or "tacos" and filled with meat from the rotating spit, tomatoes, lettuce, french fries (i know!) and a tasty mayonnaise sauce. magnificent!

i have a lot more to say, but i'll stop here and sum it up to say that i really loved our stay here. everyone was very kind and patient with us, as english was much more limited here than in barcelona or paris. i think we easily could have spent more time here exploring the area and i was a little sad to say bye to our hostess maya. we picked avignon kind of randomly because it made for a logical stop along the train route to paris (and back to the us), but it turned out to be terrific and we would highly recommend it!