Popeing Around Avignon

Flew out on Tuesday April 14. Not much to say about the joys of flying cattle class to Paris with 3 hour lay overs in Kuala Lumpur and Amsterdam except that we arrived safely if somewhat shattered.

I unknowingly committed a terrorist act by carrying a swiss army knife in carry on luggage. I unknowingly managed to evade security checks in Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur but the officious, sorry efficient, Dutch were right on to it and it was au revoir to the expensive swiss army knife. This may evoke a sensation of déjà vu for our New Zealand hiking companions JA and FL.

Travelled down to Avignon by train from Paris which was delightful if expensive given that Malaysian Airlines’cancellation of our direct flight to Paris caused us to miss the non exchangeable non refundable but very cheap train ticket we’d already paid for to Avignon. Dale naturally, but politely, challenged the meaning of non exchangeable and non refundable with the very nice people at SCNF but they very nicely explained that non exchangeable and non refundable meant the same thing in French and English but that they would be delighted to sell us a more expensive ticket that would still get us to Avignon toute suite.

Avignon – what do you say about it – we’ve been there twice now but it doesn’t grab me the way that Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt do – or at least I wish they did. Il a une histoire cést beacoup interessante but that’s kinda all. Visited the Palais de Papes this time and it is vast – I’m reminded of the line from the musical Into the Woods that goes ‘he’s tall – is that all?’ That’s not exactly fair the audio guided tour is really interesting. On that note we decided to get a French language audio guide to practice our French but rapidly discovered that we need a lot of improvement to be able to understand what on earth is going on.

Palace of the Popes - up close

Palace of the Popes - from La Tour Phillipe Bell

Parts of Avignon inside the city walls are tres beautiful – and you can buy very cheap pain au raisin ou pain a chocolat but even inside the walls some areas are pretty run down. It has a decent university so you do see some very attractive young French men wandering about but an equal number of not so attractive thuggish types loping around in gangs.

I love the shadows cast by this freshly pruned plane tree

I’ll go out on a limb and say that the best things about Avignon are the views of it from Villeneuve les Avignon, which is across the Rhone, and of course the views you get from everywhere of the mighty Rhone itself.

Lunch in Villeneuve-les-Avignon

We stayed in Avignon for a couple days and had a lovely meal one night at Le Ripert, recommended by the very helpful Michel (real name Michael) at our 2 star hotel. As I’m not exactly a gourmand traveller I decided that the next night I’d like a cheap crepe – I am bit partial to your cheap crepe meal. I’m not sure how Kath (Jane Turner) would discuss or pronounce your crepe. I suspect she’d think it was paper that you use for a bit of your origami making. Anyway I’ll leave this for PD to ponder. Anyway anyway, it was hysterical. We were the only customers in the restaurant and they seemed to have the dumb nephew serving. Jack, Matthew and Tiaan if you are reading this - and I suspect if you are there is some poor parenting going on by our siblings – none of you are dumb nephews. Anyway the restaurant proprietors then called in a friend from over the road to be served a meal to try and make it look like people were flocking to their Breton style crepes. This was not very successful as even some Americans appeared to pass by, and we left the moment we could because we were getting freaked out by the constant hovering. Having said all that I liked my meal!

Next instalment from the Richards’cottage in Russan.