Thursday 29 April - Avignon

Deep breath - get ready because there are a lot of pics with this one - too hard to do this any other way.

Arrived here in Avignon yesterday having ridden the train through the gorgeous French countryside. You know you're getting closer to the Mediterranean as the countryside gets increasingly more thickly green. Pass by old ruins of old fortifications and castles perched on hilltops, and pretty little stone-built villages.

Avignon bustles - and the first thing you see when you come out of the train station is an opening in an old wall that seems to go all the way around the town (well the centre anyway). I later discovered that this is indeed the case as the town was actually the Papal seat for quite some time before the Vatican, and that the original Papal castle is here.

Crossed over the Rhone on a bridge (one of the Ponts D'Avignon) and to my hotel - old building but completely modern inside - I have a real bathroom for a change (not a cupboard) and a great view from the room (which has a small balcony). The pic here is from the rooftop breakfast restaurant which is above my room.

Settled in and went for a walk back over the bridge into the town. Great fun wandering through the back streets away from the tourists and found a couple of very good little museums. The Musee Calvet which had a load of wonderful 15th to 18th century artworks and sculptures, and a small natural history museum called Requiem. Load of excellent fossils, and lovely old books from the likes of La Perouse including their original collections of plants etc.

Sat in the square to the side of the Papes Palace and drank red wine while listening to the music of some Chilean pipes from a busker and reading my book, then wound my way back to the hotel for a relatively early evening. Have booked myself on a tour of the Provence area tomorrow morning and they pick up at 7:50am.

And so for the reason for all the pics. The tour ended up being 2 tours and so the whole day, but what an amazing day it was too. 6 people in the morning and 8 of us in the afternoon. So here are all the pics with descriptions as it's too hard to write it all here.





The stone-built town of Gourdes where only the rich can afford to live. But it's very beautiful

Les Baux de Provence - seemingly carved into the Bauxite rocks on the top of the hill - there's a ruined castle on the top at the right. But the town itself is steep, beautifully constructed of stone and while it's the most visited village in France, we got there early, before the tourists.

Roussilon is built on iron hills that have been oxidised and are now completely ochre of all its variant colours. All the houses are built of it, making the village a beautiful tapestry of colours worthy of any painter. It's no wonder Van Gogh and all the rest of them loved painting in this region.

The complete Roman arena at Arles is incredible. It was used as a venue for gladiator fights in Roman days, and today it's used for annual bull fights as well as other events - so it's had seemingly continuous use for over 2000 years.


The outer walls are about 4 - 6 feet thick in places and 3 levels high. The size of the blocks of limestone used to build the supporting areas are massive, and the arched walkways inside are engineering feats on their own. A lot of the stairs are worn from so many feet for so many years and wandering around the structure you get a feeling that this building is deep in the fabric of the region's life.






The audio guide tour of the arena is excellent, and there's a room dedicated to the bullfights they have here as well as one for the gladiators which is extremely interesting and informative. I never knew that the gladiators were NOT slaves as the movies would have us believe, but actually specially trained fighters, much like boxers are today.


It's a little disturbing though to find out that in this arena, some of the bullfights held here end in the death of the bull, something I know has ceased in Spain.


The arena itself was built originally to house about 26,000 people, though I doubt it would hold that number these days given the condition some of the areas are in and modern laws on these things.


It's a much smaller structure than the hippodrome in Palmyra in Jordan, but in far better condition than any other I've seen and is in fact the most compete Roman arena there is.

Pont du Gard - defies me and words. Completely incredible example of the fantastic engineering skills the Romans had. This aquaduct takes water from a region miles away and was built to traverse a valley and took 15 years to build. The bit we saw over the river is only part of a massively long structure in all, with the water running along one of the upper levels. It's incredible that such a huge structure was built just to carry water - today we'd build a pipeline and suspend it - or pump the water, but the Romans used natural declination and good old gravity.


I did get a bit carried away with taking pics of and reading all the old graffiti carved into the parapets and walls though. Some of it dates back to the 17th century, and as I know the Romans had a habit of carving their names and messages into all sorts of places, I'm sure there was some here at one stage. It's just worn away now.


The pic I've decided to use here has a simple carved initials and the date 1758. Some of them are quite decorative, others beautifully structured lettering, and others are little more than carved scrawls. There is a common artifact in a lot of them though. They feature what seems to be a stone mason's hammer. I'd love to know what that means.


So now you see why I didn't want to blather on about the day. Suffice it to say that I had enjoyed every minute of it, all in good company, and all with the most beautiful balmy weather.

Tomorrow I again pack my bag and head off. This time to Lyon, then after a couple of days to Chamonix in the Alps and some actual, live, real mountains.