France page 2   Carcassonne

France page 3   Orange, Avignon

France page 4   Lyon

France page 5   Annecy

France page 6   Dijon

Video Index (click here)

Back to Journeys Main Index

JOURNEYS BY PAUL

Page 3

Orange

Avignon

Outside the Wall	Inside the Wall
Lots of Books for Sale	Tourist Office
Palais des Popes	Notre Dame Cathedral
Outside the Cathedral	Notre Dame Again
Ancient Bridge	Outside Notre Dame
Outside Notre Dame	Outside Notre Dame
Outside Notre Dame	My Lunch Cafe
My Lunch	Peaceful Avignon Street

 

 

Links

Yoga Link              

Email

 

Recent Comments

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not really in Avignon right now. I'm at the train station in Orange waiting for the train that will take me to Lyon which is about 2 hours north of here. But it's going to take a little longer because the train is going is an hour and a half late. And that train doesn't even stop in town, so I have to take another one into the city. This all sounds like I'm traveling by air if you ask me. My real destinations are either Chambery and Annecy in the Alps, and maybe the Beaujolais countryside just north of Lyon, but since I have to go through Lyon to get to those places I decided just to spend a of couple days in Lyon and do my laundry, and hopefully have a bigger hotel room. I booked one by telephone yesterday.

Last night, I had quite a treat. At sunset, I climbed the hill overlooking the city of Orange and the Roman stadium. I was just planning on enjoying the view, but there was an orchestra playing in the stadium below. They were practicing for a big concert for the next day. And guess which song they played all the way through? They played George Gershwin's American in Paris. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a Gershwin fanatic. So I climbed down to the cliff overhanging the stadium and listened to American in Paris while the sun slowly sank, and the birds came out and flew all over the city. Very nice. I filmed a lot of it, and I'll edit it and post it.

I went to the Avignon festival a couple of days ago, and you an see the pictures on the left. You've probably already seen the videos of the festival and the train ride. There should be links to those videos to the left as well. Avignon is another Medieval walled city. The festival was crowded, as you can see, but it wasn't as stifling as, for instance, the 45 minutes I spent at Oktoberfest in Munich several years ago. At least you could breathe here, and there wasn't as much noise pollution. At the festival, the streets were lined with tables of old books for sale upwards of $100 per, and there were lots of art displays as well. The temperature was about 94 degrees, but when I found some shade, or went inside a cathedral, I could cool off pretty quickly. From the posters displayed all over the place, I think most of the festival takes place in theaters and small venues at night. There were a lot of advertisements for music and plays. My favorite thing at the festival wasn't the festival at all. It was past the festival on the slope of a hill overlooking the Rhone River. One 25 foot sailboat with it's mast tied down on the deck was motoring in to a dock. That reminds me. In Carcassonne, I saw another small sailboat motoring around in the canal and I wondered how far you could travel around in France and the neighboring countries in a small sailboat. In Carcassonne, there were also some small cabin cruisers for rent, and I took down their web addresses. Anyway, I sat in the shade of a tree on the grassy slope and watched a few boats on the river, and past the river to the towns and hills (and sunflower fields) of the countryside. You could see pretty far. There were only four other people scattered under their own trees in the park. One couple was having a picnic. It seems there is always some peaceful refuge from the busy streets in France. Even in Paris, the banks of the Seine River and the many parks are always within reach.

The biggest attraction in Avignon is the Pope Palace. Around the 14th century, the papacy need more protection than they could get in Italy, so they aligned with some French king and moved their residence to Avignon. I'm not sure how long they stayed, but when protection could be assured, they moved back to Italy. Very political. I also read that the rocky outcropping where the Pope Palace is was also the residence of people in prehistoric times. The picture of the half  bridge you see to the left somewhere are the remains of a bridge that spanned the Rhone River and connected Avignon Villeneuve (new village) with Avignon, and, with the ability to walk across the river, made Villeneuve a suburb of Avignon.

So I wandered around Avignon for three hours, then took the train back to Orange. I want to add something to what I wrote yesterday about waiting for your food at the restaurants. I don't want to imply that the waiters and waitresses are sitting down somewhere, smoking their cigarettes, and making you wait for everything. They are almost always busy setting up tables, taking orders, getting bills and change, and attending to other duties. I think there are less waiters per customers here than in the U.S. And they always appear to be running around. The waiter that worked at my  morning cafe in Toulouse appeared was so busy, he appeared to be on the verge of a heart attack. Anyway, the waiters don't smoke while they're waiting on you. But the customers! Don't get me started! Even when you eat outside.

thanks for reading,

Paul Ogier