Avignon, France
So, We made it to this point on our trip. We figured that this would be the go/no go decision point, if we didn't like it we could just head for Prague from here and bug out, or continue the trip by turning east and south. The answer is that we're having a blast and we're going to keep going. Whether the journey includes Istanbul or not is still undecided, but we're sure going to continue for now.
Today we travelled from Beziers to Avignon, a little less than two hours on the road. We got lost coming out of Beziers on some new highway construction and brand-new roundabouts. That was funny as hell, Hal's maps were useless to him and our little car icon on his screen was out in the middle of the white space of a nearby field, and he was telling us to turn left on roads that weren't even there. Funny. So Jan and I were on our own, but we're pretty good at this game, Hal's just our backup anyway. Or so we thought. Using our maps, and our best judgement as navigator and driver, and following the road signs that said 'Montpellier' (halfway to Avignon) we managed to get ourselves into the entrance of the A9 Motorway, at the toll booth but before the actual highway. Nice, huh? But it was the wrong direction. I managed to get turned around and out of there, otherwise the next 'U-turn' option would have been about 30 kilometers south. Somewhat shaken, we got stuck on backroads for about a half hour before we finally picked up the A9 going north. With Hal's help, as he finally figured out where he was.
Then we were on a roll. Traffic got very heavy around Montpellier, lots of trucks and cars and a high average speed. About 20 kms after Montpellier, things got even faster. For about a 15 minute stretch there I averaged around 145, with bursts of over 150 kmh. And I wasn't leading the pack, oh no. I was keeping up with the flow, if I was slower I would have been a hazard. The road was good, of course, long gentle curves with excellent pavement, few trucks and those behaved themselves and stayed in the right lane, bright sun very high in the sky. At those average speeds, on that road, time and distance go by very quickly and the concentration is total. Aliens could have landed beside the road and I wouldn't have noticed. My eyes have that 1000 yard stare, switching between the mirror and the traffic ahead of me.
But that's not the idea of a trip like this, right. That's a commute, not a holiday. So a decision was made by Jan and I today, Now that we are off the coast and there are lots of roads around us, we're done with superhighways for now. It's the backcountry roads for us, just like when we left Calais. Slow down and enjoy. Otherwise, we will be at the end of the road and it is only February. We calculated today that we are about nine driving hours from Prague. So we have to slow down now.
Got to Avignon before noon, got our hotel, and ventured out into the walled city itself.
So, what's Avignon all about, what's the fuss here? Seems that back around the year 1309 or so, organized religion in the form of the Catholic church had stirred up some powerful enemies, and some of them attacked the Pope and tried to kill him. These powerful enemies also threatened to overrun the residence of the Pope in Rome and the seat from which the power of the church was wielded. Among other things, this was called the Great Schism of the Catholic church. Google it, there's some good reading and high drama in the Wikkipedia pages. Anyway, the pope escaped with his hide and, for one reason or another too detailed for my notes, he wound up in Avignon.
And because the church was still powerful, and still very very rich, the pope decided to build a strongly fortified home for himself and his church. That pope died of natural causes it seems, and the next one elected was just as nervous as the first about the enemies outside the gates of this walled city of Avignon that he took what the first guy had build and made it bigger and stronger, a real fortress. And so on, for the next hundred or so years, bigger and stronger. Eventually, the enemies of the Catholic church were waited out and the pope vacated the 'Palace of the Popes' as the structure is now called.
Over the succeeding centuries, the building has been used for many things, fair and foul, until it has fallen to the level of being a tourist attraction today. As such, it is essentially a hollow rock castle/palace with almost none of the fine furniture and hangings and rugs that it had in the pope's day. But all the rooms are there, famous and infamous, sites of the papal negotiations and confrontations, lives and deaths, interactions with kings and queens and Moors and infidels and mongol hordes. One really neat thing, here and almost everywhere else we go, is that with the price of admission we get a radio set where we key in the numbers of the various sites of interest within the attraction and hear a detailed story in English. The Palace must have had 50 different stories, hours and hours of listening in full and interesting detail. Nothing that you couldn't get from a Google search, or from Wikkipedia, but very interesting to hear the details of what went on in this room while we are actually standing there. Far too much for these notes which are too long already.
Exiting the Palace, Jan and I made for The Bridge. This bridge does not have the gruesome history of the 'Bridge of Sighs' in Venice, it is actually a pleasant little bridge that spans part of the Rhone River that flows past Avignon. It was made semi-famous by a little nursery rhyme, composed in the 1800's, that starts "Sur le Pont d'Avignon, ...". Google it, it may bring back memories. The bridge was begun in 1171 and has suffered repeated washout and reconstruction since then. Now only four of the original 22 arches survive and most of the Rhone is unspanned by the bridge. No matter, modern bridges abound within sight of this historic bridge but at the time of its construction it was the only bridge over the Rhone between Lyon and the Mediteranean and a point of contention between the then-current Avignon pope and the king of France at the time, Phillip the Fair.
The weather was good, no rain and cool but not cold. The sun shone about half the time, and was warm, overall a very good day for touring around. We had an excellent lunch on the main street of the walled part of the city, lots of energy for the walking around that followed.
Tonight, very tired from the drive and hours of hiking around. Tomorrow we will stay put and tone down the adventuring. BTW, now that we're back in France, we realize how very much we enjoyed the Spanish and Portugese people that we met.
It was Jan's father's birthday today, he would have been 93 years old and I'm sure would have enjoyed his youngest daughter's travel adventures very much.
