Wiki for Avignon
Tourist information for Avignon and all of Provence
We depart Vienne for Avignon. Morning at leisure, or creme brulee demo aboard. Lunch on board, afternoon at leisure. Crew show after dinner on board.
13 Nov 2013
Still in Avignon. Walking tour in the morning, optional tour of Arles in the afternoon. The ship departs Avignon before dinner, then Gypsy night entertainment. The ship overnights in Tarascon, across from Beaucaire.
Actuals:
12 Nov 2013
At Hotel Mercure near P’ont du Avignon in Avignon. We had a late breakfast and then a walking tour from 0930 to 1230 of the city’s major parts and the Palais du Papes (Palace of Popes). The walking tour was ok, the gal had a French accent on her English that made it hard to understand. But we got to St Peter’s church, the Halles (market hall) and the palace. Took lots of pictures. The palace is a huge pile of stone. Some of its rooms have older furniture in them to emulate the 14th century period when the Pope was located here. When the Pope moved back to Rome, everything was taken from here to Rome but the walls. The rooms with frescoes on the walls from the 1300’s are stunning.
Then we stopped at a restaurant that featured pizzas. We shared a big pizza and had beer, a double malt brown beer. We headed for the hotel but stopped in a souvenir shop for a few goodies. At the hotel, we put our feet up and working the computer. We’ll go out again later.
Later, we went for a hike up the main street of Avignon going away from the Popes Palace. We bought a few little things in a couple of stores.
Owen photos
Dolores photos
13 Nov 2013
Today is Chateauneuf-du-Pape and Arles, both abbreviated versions of the tours we would have seen had the boat been able to travel. We bused to Chateneauneuf to taste wine and chocolate. We were placed in a big room with two small chocolates and in sequence given three small wine samples. We were encouraged to speak our impressions of the wines - young, old, smoky, fruity, etc. The first wine was a nice white wine. Opinions were all over the page. We were asked to sample the first chocolate (laced with lavender) and say which taste was experienced first - lavender or chocolate. Then sip the wine with the chocolate and say what happened. The opinions were all over the place. On to a young red wine.
The young red drew opinions again, depending on how the taster viewed the color and the tears and so forth. The third wine was a nice older 2007 red. I didn’t like it at all, but D thought it was good. With the second chocolate, laced with thyme (really), it improved (smoother) to D, but to me it was still not good.
The lecturer then said that exemplifies the differences in palates and noses across the human experience. There is no “good” for all, nor “bad”.
We went through the gift shop to the bus and returned to Avignon.
Marylou and D said they were going to take the afternoon off and went to the hotel. Glenn & I went up to the square and split a nice pizza and had a half-bottle of red wine for lunch. I stopped on the way back to get a little music box of the kid’s folk song, “Pont du Avignon”. Glenn & I went to the bus, ML & D to their rooms.
We bused to Arles and stopped at the north ancient gates of the city, from Roman times. We walked down Rue Voltaire to the Roman Amphitheatre, a smaller version of the Coliseum in Rome. It has been used over time, especially when it was a fort at the revolution, but the shell is still there. Seating has been added and event are performed here, including the local bull-fights. We passed the Museum Photographique and Cafe Van Gogh on our way to Place de Republique where we saw the church, town hall, the palace from the time it was not French and the local streets.
We then went to Epace Van Gogh, where the artist was treated in hospital about the time he cut off his ear. The interior of that Hotel Dieu is as it was in the painting he did of it in 1889. I bought three post cards of his paintings of things we saw. We had a little free time there, which I could have done without as it was cold & the wind “le Mistral” was whipping around (worse tomorrow, we’re told). When that ended, we walked through the streets to the bus and drove back to Avignon to our hotel.
We cleaned up and went down to dinner (smoked pork and other things). Tonight, Pin-Hao and Ida Liu joined us. He was a EE who worked for Lotus and then IBM. He was born in China, she in Taiwan. She still is a teacher but retired. They’ve traveled back to Taiwan many times to see family and have traveled Europe extensively. Nice people. We had a few glasses of wine with them and learned a lot.
We adjourned to the lounge and had Sebastien serve us port and brandy. A retired Army guy came along after we’d almost finished and started a whole new conversation. We chatted and finally left at 2200 to come upstairs and quit.
It was a good day.
Link to photos
