Day Tripping Part 2: Avignon

On Wednesday, Dawn, Cathy and I went to Avignon (nicknamed the City of Popes) to do another day trip. Avignon is about an hour east of Montpellier by train. Avignon is in Provence which is famous for their lavender products and their herbs. In Avignon, we first visited the Palais des Papes (Popes' Palace). It was immense and very informative. There were at least 3 levels and we climbed all around the structure. It looked like an old world castle with little chambers for all the different popes that lived there as well as all the servants that lived for the pope. Many different popes lived there throughout the time that this castle was heavily in use in the 14th century. Once one pope settled there, many followed. It's one of the most important gothic palaces in the world, we learned. One of the most interesting parts of the castle was the gigantic dining hall and the vestment chamber (where the pope got all dressed up for special holidays). I did manage to fall down about 4 stone steps while on the tour which was really embarrassing since there were huge tour groups going around us at the time. I was not hurt but my butt did feel sore all day. We got free English audio guides which looked like giant 1980's style cell phones. All we had to do was push a number and we got information. Very ingenious indeed. Another super cool fact about the Palace is that it was built in a mere 20 years and it's one of the 10 most visited monuments in France. Parts of the Palace burnt down in a big fire in the 1300's so many of the original wooden ceilings and many of the artifacts inside were recreations or rebuilt from the original.

Since my camera is still out of commission, I have since started "borrowing" images from the visited places websites, but never fear, this is actually what I saw: le Palais des Papes:


Oh, it should be noted that in the really huge chapel, all the stained-glass windows were covered with big, thick, black cloths to block out all the light. This was for us to be able to see the strange projections of snake charmers all over the place in the huge hall. We had NO idea why the projections and TVs were all over this hall and there certainly weren't ANY signs in the place to tell us about it. I looked it up online afterwards and found out that it was a special exhibit by an artist (Douglas Gordon) to show the good and bad of Christianity by way of snakes and snake-charmers.

After the Palais, we walked around Avignon which was nice and chilly until we got to a huge church "Notre Dame de DOM". Notre Dame means our lady and DOM means what we assume is German for cathedral. Anyway, it was huge, very chrisitian with beautiful paintings and tapestries. The little vestibules were beautiful and the stained-glass windows were awe-inspiring. The organ was just huge and impressive and the ceilings were dozens of feet high.

After the church, we walked up a huge hill to see an amazing view of the city and the Avignon Bridge. It's pretty famous since there is a song written about it; "Le Pont d'Avignon" but honestly, we looked at it from afar and it serves no real purpose since it only juts out into the water halfway. It's not so much of a bridge as it is a monument at this point in time. After further web research, I discovered much of the original bridge was destroyed by the seige of Louis VIII to the city. You can pay extra to actually go on the bridge but due to the cold, windy conditions we decided that a view from afar was good enough.
Here is a picture to illustrate my point:
And here are Dawn and Cathy up high in the city:

And Here is Dawn and I up high in the city:

Lunch was hard found since I really wanted crepes and the creperie that was nice and affordable was full with some party. Instead, we had crepes at another restaurant which I am sure was just as good as the other, cuter creperie. I had a crepe with creme fraiche, smoked salmon and cheese. It was so delicious! Cathy and Dawn both had crepes with ham and cheese. I think Dawn's had mushrooms too.

After lunch, we checked out a free museum in the city called "la Musée Requien", which was a natural history museum. That was cool and they had a lot of displays on aquatic life and some really freaky looking taxidermy of random animals from all over the world. Avignon is surrounded, by the way, with a huge roman wall all the around the city. This was for protection, obviously, since Popes were living there. In all, Avignon is very rich in history and I am so happy to have gone and seen the city of Popes.

Your British word lesson of the day: when saying the individual letters j and z, instead of saying them as we do (jay and zee), they say jai and zed.