After our six days in Nice we were on our way to visit the small town of Avignon. It's not on the coast but we had heard so many great things about this place that we made a point of paying it a visit before we headed to Marseille. Avignon is a very old town that was walled. As you will see the walls still stand and do give it lots of character. Since we had heard many complimentary things about Avignon we had arrived with high expectations. But to our surprise, it actually sort of blew them away! We were also warned that this city could be very windy, and they weren't lying!
Here is a great photo from the outside part of the wall at evening time. Although the city is walled, it's only the old part that is walled, and much of the city, which is the modern part, is outside the wall. We didn't really leave the old part of the city, as it was beautiful and interesting enough to hold our attention for the 2 days we were there!
Here is a clock tower, maybe belongs to a church, who knows! directly to the left of this photo is where we stayed with another wonderful couchsurfing host!
Like all old towns and cities in Europe, Avignon is full of churches.
Our yummy adventures continued in France...we found this great pizza and pasta restaurant that we ended up eating there more than once! You can see the wood burning pizza oven and the wood it burns in the background!
When in France, you have to try a steak tartare (can you guess which one of us ate this?). Not many places in Canada make this dish, which is essentially a rare burger patty. However, it's made safely (hopefully!) by grinding very fresh meat, seasoned, and assembled into a thick hunk of meat. This tartare was a little bland in flavour, but Cliff thinks it may be that the flavour of the meat is supposed to sit front-and-centre. Or maybe it was a mediocre tartare. It's sometimes served with a raw egg on top, which is something Cliff would have preferred but alas it was not to be at this resto. The side salad and roast potatoes were absolutely delicious!
Stefan sang notes when he saw this on the menu...a veggie lasagne! This was impossible to find in Italy (except for pesto lasagne which isn't suppose to have meat in it), so he got pretty excited at the chance to have lasagne without having to eat dead cow! Stefan can't remember exactly what veggies were in it, only remembers how damn delicious it was...can taste it in my mouth right now! As you can see, it came with a healthy helping of parmesan cheese!
Just a cute little cobblestone street in old town Avignon!
One of the many squares in this city, most of which have outside seating from restaurants around the area.
A cool shot of the wall from the inside. One evening we just walked without a map, and ended up bumping into the end! It kinda felt like when Truman sailed into the sky wall in the Truman Show...shit, hope you have all seen that movie!
As we walked along our encasement, we found a mouse hole...for giant mice! Hahaha. So you can escape safely out of the old town through little openings like this...there are bigger ones for cars!
Another really nice square, well more of a rectangle here. More places to eat great food and enjoy the beautiful sights of the old town.
The main road leading into the old town. Like most main streets, there is lots of shopping, and things to eat along the way. It was a nice street, but didn't seem to be as old as the middle of town.
Ooooh...la la!
Interesting looking church.
So they have little steel stumps, equal to the guard rails in Canada along the side of some roads. But the ones in Avignon are nicer looking...especially the ones that someone took the time to make happy! He's so glad the sun is out, shining on his little face! :P
It's a whole gang of happy faced guard stumps!
Another church.
Another street...this was one of the main pedestrian shopping streets in the old town. However as you can see, it's not busy. That's because at this time of the day, the stores were closed. The French live to live, not to work!
A very cool, castle like looking clock tower.
A really great building. Something about this building oozes a lot of character to Stefan. He sees a gloomy day, a couple hundred years ago, people riding horses and carriages, people talking all French, burlesque girls hanging around outside, people eating croissants, wearing berets, painting in the corner, miming...you know, all that cliche French stuff! :P
Cool building? Maybe, if you think so! There is a little Cliff in there, can you spot him!?
So these next photos won't all have things written under them. That's because there are a lot from the same place. It's of the Papal Palace...it was the residence of the Pope at one point in history. Interesting, but we can't remember all the facts to give you a good history lesson on it...but Wikipedia is great! This photo is one of one part of a building as we are about to enter the Palace grounds. If you look in about the middle of the picture, you can see an opening between the two buildings. There is a archway which you go through to enter.
This is the little archway you go through! Everyone suck in!
At some point, the camera got accidentally turned on black and white...so you get these in colourblind view! This is a building next to the palace grounds, and the side with new windows...there are painted windows! Each one has different people in them. In colour, this looked awesome, 'cause it was very colourful! You will have to use your imagination!
The courtyard of the palace.
A cool building opposite the main building of the palace, with a very white person...one of those, "I'll move like Charlie Chaplin when you drop a buck in my hat" guy!
Front of the Papal Palace, with the church to the left.
A cool brass statue that was just being installed while we were there.
A view from the landing in front of the church that looked out over the courtyard.
Turn around...and you see a statue and the church.
We got colour! Yay! It's the church, seen from a hill and garden grounds to the left of it!
In the grounds of the palace, there is a small pond with ducks, and a cafe that sits over the water a little. Seems out of place, cause it's certainly not anywhere near as old as the rest of the palace!
Looking out over a part of the grounds, not sure if this is a tree farm or something!?
Another view from the grounds, up a little further...the grounds are on a wide hill. Here you are looking out over the river that runs through Avignon, and in the background there is another castle/palace of some sort.
The river, and the bridge, that doesn't go all the way across the river!
Yes, it really is that windy in Avignon! At the top of the hill that the grounds are on, the wind was insane!
A cool view of the rooftops of old town Avignon!
So, along with this tree being really large, and old, the wind being super strong, meant that it needs a crutch! We heard this creepy creaking like a tree was about to fall over on top of us, and this is what we saw!
The road that runs around the river side of the palace grounds. The grounds being on the left side.
Ah, back to the bridge, that won't get you anywhere but in the middle of the river!
Looking back at the walls of the palace.
More half bridge! It's kinda nice looking though. Is that a church in the middle there? We don't know, you had to pay to get on the bridge...and well, we had to penny pinch on some things! :P
Street
A very awesome looking theatre.
More painted windows with people in them! Sadly, the one in black and white had more colour to it.
A nice street close to the area where we stayed.
Ahhhh...don't you just want your car to get towed if it looks like this! It's the happiest, cutest tow sign ever!
Looking at a car entrance and exit from inside the walled town.
Now, this is pushing it for a sidewalk!
Ohhhh, spooky! It was a nice street, but we really like how this photo turned out.
Ditto.
Mmmmm....always hungry when there is awesome new foods to try! There was a tartine restaurant we walked by one day which had some incredibly gorgeous-looking pies on the counter. But it was the tartines we wanted to try, so we sat down for one before dinner. Tartines are Frances tostadas--toasted bread with various toppings. The one above was a three cheese tartine; it had blue cheese, goat cheese and Camembert. It was tasty, but very light given the price.
So, this is back to that restaurant you saw at the beginning. This time we got take out, which proved to be very difficult...in France, your pizzas don't get cut into slices, so eating one on the side of the road, with nothing to cut it with, while hoping it doesn't blow away cause the wind is about 70km/h is very hard! Oh, plus all the tasty honey that was running down your hands made it that much messier! Anyway, this was a super yummy wood oven pizza with eggplant, mozzarella, some other type of cheese we can't remember, and honey! It also came with a pack of hot sauce! YUM YUM!
It just so happened, the only night and two days we were in Avignon, they were having their annual music festival, which takes place all around the old city. Sometimes it was a big set up in a square, sometimes like this picture, it was a tiny set up on a corner. It was pretty great, as the music had a wide range, from tribal, native, rock, celtic, folk, and even french rap! Our favourite, was this awesome walking drum band which we followed for quiet a while!
Ah, here is the walking drum band that was awesome!
We think these guys were a cuban sounding band.
There is a band in this photo, but it's really about whats behind them. See that green wall, well that's exactly what it is! Its the entire side of a building that has grass, ferns, vines and small trees growing on it! Was a pretty awesome art installation, but at the same time a wicked green space creator and well, the fresh air it makes is also pretty great!
A rock band that was quite good, they had a crowd around for a couple hours.
As you leave the old town on the way to the train station, this is what you walk through. A park like place that leads to a really cool opening in the city wall.
This is us and our couchsurfing host Céline, who was really sweet!
Like we said at the start of this post, Avignon was even better than expected! We were very fortunate to have stumbled into staying there at the same time as their music festival, which made for a very memorable night. Later in the Summer is the Avignon theatre festival, which is what the city is really famous for, so there is still reason to pay Avignon a second visit! Like Rethymno in Greece, this was a very attractive small town that deserves a return visit. We hadn't expected to fall in love with either city as much as we did! We found that with cities like Avignon and Rethymno, while there aren't massive landmarks to sightsee, it was extremely pleasurable to have a simple walk about town, enjoying the cafes, cute streets, churches, architecture, and romantic French atmosphere! For anyone who happens to go to Southern France, Avignon is definitely a stop we would highly recommend.
