Avignon

Hello everyone and thank you for your lovely comments on our travels.  We are having such a lovely time and very much appreciate the wonderful opportunity to explore and experience this part of the world.

We left Avignon about 5 in the afternoon as we had spent most of the day in Aix.  We got caught in peak hour traffic but as Avignon is not too far from Aix our journey was relatively quick.  We stayed in a hotel inside the old city wall which was in walking distance to shops and restaurants.

We spent the morning of the next day wandering around the old part of the city including the old papal palace.  We had a look at the old bridge which I thought was rather lovely although part of it has been washed away due to past floods.  Here are some photos taken on our wanderings.

Some old arches in a lovely park and next to a big church.

As we've walked around the streets we've had fun looking in shop windows.  We saw a little dog wearing a baseball cap, he was sitting inside the door of a dog accessory shop and presume he belonged to the shop owner.  We saw very colourful mens shirts, unfortunately I couldn't convince hubby to buy any.  We even saw very interesting toilet paper, I kid you not.  Here are the photos we took.

Sudoku on loo paper!!!

We had to attend to laundry in the afternoon and were very happy to discover cafes next to the laundromat.  We were able to spend the time sitting outside under trees and sipping on a drink or two.  We also had fun people watching, observing the fashions and even some romantically inclined people.

The next day we had planned to visit some of the surrounding areas of Avignon including St. Remy, however we discovered it they were having an annual festival and it was absolutely crowded.  So we drove to the Lesbaux de Provence area which had the most marvellous rock formations.  We had a fantastic time walking around and having a bit of a climb. The scenery was spectacular, my photos don't do the area justice. Here are some photos or the rocks, pine trees and wildflowers in bloom.

  On the way to our next destination we stopped at a roadside fruit and vegetable stall and bought strawberries, apricots and cherries.  I've never seen such perfect strawberries, they were the best I've ever tasted.  The cherries were good too.

We decided to have a look at Gordes, another old hillside fortress town.   As we approached we could see it was quite similar to St. Paul de Vence and though we would just drive around.  However we got lucky and found a parking spot very close to the centre, the first 50 minutes of parking were free.  That being the case we decided we could have a quick look around and were very glad we did. We had enough time for a coffee and wandered into a café thinking it was rather deserted.  To our delight we discovered chairs and tables outside on a balcony with the most spectacular views.  We scored a table right on the edge with the best view.  Here are some photos from our time spent there.

 

The view from the cafe balcony.

Looking down from the balcony.

This little boy must have been exhausted.  He look so cute I couldn't resist taking a photo.

 On the way back to Avignon I saw these roses growing by the side of the road in some kind of wild hedge.  It was just delightful and I had to stop for a photo.

 So this ended our stay in the Avignon area.  The next couple of days we spent driving quite a few hours in the car and my next post will be about those experiences.

Bye for now,

Anne  xx