North out of town today with Gretel our GPS taking us the most direct route along narrow little back roads past apple and pear orchards, and tunnel houses full of whopping zuchini plants and tomatoes almost ready for their summer crop. Once she linked us back on to a more major route we found each intersection (even if only a T intersection) is managed by a roundabout which is an interesting feature of traffic management in these parts.
A straightforward trip to Avignon and relatively easly into the centre of the the historic city and a carpark building. Our Puegeot 5008 has been a perfect size to comfortably cart us about and discreetly carry our luggage but if you're thiking of hiring a car in Europe I'd definitely suggest the smaller the better as country and inner city roads as well as the carpark buildings are designed for very small cars (and very clever parkers! Well done Bruce and Fred for some awesome efforts!)
Avignon is a very attractive City on the banks of the Rhone (in fact many times in its history it's been under the waters of the Rhone) and for a few hundred years was the seat of the Papacy so has all the fabulous trappings Papal money brings such as magnificent Basilica and Papal palace. Our first visit to a church where someone has been playing the organ - just the organist having a practice but fabulous to listen to!
We decided to take an orientation ride on the little tourist "train" which meanders through the narrow streets with a commentary on points of interest. Well worth it as it gave us a great overview before we split up with two hours to explore. Bruce and Diana took a tour through the Palace while Fred and I went to the Bridge of Avignon with a wonderful audioguide about its history. Even thought they didn't really dance on the bridge,but under the bridge, we still followed the custom and sang Sur le Pont de Avignon (as best we could remember) and danced, though rather briefly as we thought we may be blow away by the Mistral which was still howling today. I've read more about the mistral and the word means "masterly"!
From Avignon we headed to a lavendar farm we'd plotted the GPS for. The 20 kilometres ended up taking us an hour and half after Gretel being very confused helping us exit the City and then being diverted because of an accident on the route we were using. So Mel it sounds like you biking for miles to see lavendar, we drove for miles and when we arrived it was really just a lavendar museum as opposed to lavendar fields! However, there was lots of lavendar growing around the complex, the display of farming the lavendar and distilling the oil was great and the museum of stills etc very interesting and then, of course, was the shop with the products! We asked the young woman where the fields were and she said 40km away in the mountains, very narrow and winding and the lavendar wouldn't be flowering till August this year.
Dinner at home tonight and an early night. Tomorrow fred and I are off to Spain; Gemma and Davi'ds in Catalonia, then day trip to Barcelona Wednesday but back to Catlonia to join the Annual celbration of St John's Day - the big Catalonian celebration.
I'm leaving the netpad with Bruce and Diana so may not add any more posts till we meet up and settle into St Pardoux. Will still clear emails. Take care everyone. Bye for now
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I loved Avignon and also sang and danced on the bridge. As you do. :-) Good for you I say! You seem to be doing really well with finding your way round, odd hiccup aside. And getting a bit waylaid is all part of the adventure really. I look forward to the next chapter!
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