Known for its annual performing arts festival, Avignon is a bustling walled city, which is a magnet for tourists, it seems. The city is full of many museums and the highlights here seem to be the massive fortress of the medieval popes, the Palais des Papes and the Pont St. Benezet also known as the famous Pont D’Avignon in the French nursery rhyme.
We arrived a little after lunch and were greeted by sunny blue skies and HOT weather, a pleasant change from the cloudy skies in Belgium and Luxembourg. Our first task was to find a place to stay. We had decided to take a bit of a break from the constant moving around and to stay in Avignon for 2 nights even though we knew we’d be able to see all the major sites in one evening. We found a great room in a one star hotel at Hotel Innova for a price of 47 Euros a night. We checked in, put on our summer clothes and headed out to the streets of Avignon.
We took a different approach to exploring this town and rather than taking our map and following a set path to see all the “must-see’s”, we put the map away and just wandered off in any direction. We had a wonderful evening just strolling the streets, many of them side streets where you could see the locals going about their everyday routines rather than the mass of tourists all taking photographs.
During our walk, we came across the Palace of the Popes, the biggest Gothic palace in the world, which was built in less than 20 years. From the outside, it didn’t really look to be much of anything spectacular to us. This had nothing on the Versailles Palace and some of the many Notre Dame churches we have seen. Thus, we decided to forego going inside as we figured we’d save that money to go into the more worldly sites such as the Colosseum in Rome and the Acropolis in Greece to name just a few.
Next to the Palace of the Popes was the exquisite Cathedral of Notre Dame-des-Doms with its gold Virgin Mary statue sitting atop the church looking down on the statue of Jesus on the cross. The interior of the church was not your usual Notre Dame like interior. There were not as many stained windows, making the church rather dark. Instead the main altar had fresco paintings adorning the ceiling above it.
We carried on our walk through a pretty park, Rocher des Doms where you could get views of the entire city, its ancient walls and a view of the famous Pont D’Avignon bridge or formally known as Pont St. Benezet. This bridge was built in the 12th century and destroyed in 1226 by crusades and rebuilt. It was further damaged numerous times by raging floodwaters of the Rhone River and all work to rebuild the bridge was stopped in the 17th century. Today only 4 of the 22 original arches remain.
Our evening ended with a fantastic dinner at one of the many outdoor restaurants lining Place de l’Horage. We had a wonderful 3-course meal for 11 Euros each, taxes and tip included. Now that’s a deal. It’s great to sit down at a restaurant and know exactly how much your meal will be without having to be surprised at how much it really ends up being after taxes and tip. Although many say Europe is overpriced and expensive; Chris and I think that food and hotel costs thus far have been very reasonable and are much cheaper than in Vancouver. You could never get a delicious three course meal for 11 Euros equivalent to $15.40 Cdn nor would you ever get a glass of wine for 2 Euros ($2.80 Cdn). It’s the strength of the Euro itself compared to the Canadian dollar that makes it appear like Europe is way overpriced. Yes, compared to Asia, its much, much more expensive but compared to Vancouver, I’d say living and working here would be a lot cheaper than living in Vancouver.
Our second day in Avignon was a free day for us. We had a FANTASTIC day and we’ll just leave it at that.
Tomorrow is another day and we’re off to Marseille with a side trip to hopefully see Aix-en-Provence. We had wanted to drive down from Avignon as suggested by our good friends, Parveen and James but realized quickly that it would take a big chunk out of our budget. To rent a car for one day would have cost more than 200 Euros by the time we paid for gas, insurance and the extra kms. We decided to skip this idea and perhaps rent a car in Italy somewhere if it’s cheaper.
It’s hard to believe that it is already Sept 4th. How time in Europe seems to be flying by much faster than the 1st half of our trip. Before we know it, we’ll be back home with the rest of you working folks…..but that’s still another 3 months away so let’s not talk about it. Hope everyone back home in Vancouver is doing well….enjoy the last few weeks of summer. Know you’re all in our thoughts and we look forward to hearing from you soon.
Signing off…
Roaming Rav
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