The campsite at Avignon had a loud speaker warning system for in case of flooding. On arrival, the Rhône River had looked very high and, worryingly, the rain continued to fall all evening and all night. I half expected to be issued with life-jackets at check in! My nightmares on Sunday night included being thrown out of a kayak and also of floating down the Rhône in Eileen, bobbing along past the Popes Palace and then turning over in slow motion. Not a good night’s sleep! We’re praying desperately for dry weather, like criminals must pray for the perfect bank robbery…….
Around 11am the rain eased, so we donned our raincoats, walked over the Pont Edouard Daladier (bridge) and into the walled city. We found the Office de Tourisme and some public toilets, both of which are always very handy. We nosed in a few shops and as the heavy rain returned, we chose a restaurant for steak and chips; it seemed like the right sort of meal for a bad-weather day.
,
The old part of the city is rather lovely with its maze of narrow streets; we think we went around in circles but we finally popped out under a wall of the huge Palais des Papes and out in to the expansive Place du Palais. We strolled through the Rocher des Doms, a garden that slopes up to the top of a bluff where there are wonderful views. From there you can see across the Rhône River to Villeneuve les Avignon, over to the Dentelles de Montmirail and we could even see the top of Mont Ventoux through the murky clouds. Below us was the Pont d’ Avignon (Pont St Bénezét), or at least the remaining four of the original twenty-two arches of the bridge. We mumbled the song, but opted not to “l’on y danse tout en rond” on it…..perhaps if it had been a sunny day…..?
The interior of the Palais des Papes seemed a more weather appropriate option. Nine Popes chose to live here during the 14th century, rather than in the Vatican, but since then I think they could have looked after their old home a bit better. It’s a fabulous, crumbling place and retains a few bits of old frescoes and floor tiles, but most of it has been ransacked or fallen in to disrepair over the centuries, however we did spend a couple of hours getting lost in its empty rooms, passages and courtyards and reading all the information sheets.
We popped in to the Cathédrale Notre Dame des Doms, which was very grand but very gloomy and dark inside, in complete contrast to the shining gold figure of the Virgin Mary on the spire.
On the way back to Eileen, we found our way down to the Pont d’Avignon. It seems quite sad to think that it was repaired and re-built so many times and then finally abandoned in the 17th century. A bridge should definitely go somewhere……
Tuesday morning was spent in a queue in the laundrette, waiting for use of the lone tumble dryer. But I spent the time productively reading the Sunday Times magazine from April 7th. Rodney caught up on what was happening to the real Robinson Crusoe in his book ‘Selkirk’s Island’; he keeps muttering that he’s glad he wasn’t a sailor back then.
At 3pm the skies cleared and we strolled down the riverbank to catch the ferry over to the city. Unfortunately the jetty was completely under water and so no ferries were able to run. So we turned around, walked back past the campsite and over the bridge again to see if Avignon looked different without the rain.
We found roads we hadn’t been down before and also popped in to the Orange shop to buy some gigabytes for wi-fi. So far, we had managed without it, as most campsites had their own available to campers, but we thought it would probably come in handy at some point. We paid €20 for 2 Gb, thanked the man and wandered on through the old pedestrian-only area of the city. In need of a seat, we found a café for a cup of hot chocolate and proceeded to test the Orange dongle in our Microsoft Surface. It wouldn’t work; we searched about in various areas, but just couldn’t get it to ‘play’. So we found our way back to the Orange shop, where another nice man had a look about and finally came up with an answer. “A dongle for wi-fi will not work with a Microsoft Surface”; dang! He suggested we buy a mi-fi as that would work. “Ah ha” we said, “we have one of those back at the campsite”.
Not wanting to eat too early in the evening, we sat in one of the squares to people watch for a while. I have to say they have very posh drunks in Avignon. One very grubby chap with long grey dreadlocks was swigging from a champagne bottle, obviously not a ‘cheap drunk’. At 7pm we ducked in to a very empty little Vietnamese restaurant, as we were both craving some Asian food by now. It wasn’t particularly Vietnamese food and wasn’t anything like as good as the meals we had last year in Vietnam, or even the ones in Sydney, but it was tasty enough and a nice change of flavours. Back at the campsite, we tested out the sim card from the dongle in our mi-fi and did a little dance; it worked ! Yippee ! Rodney checked the news and we had an early night zzzzzzzzz
