Avignon

October 6, 2013

     I have spent the last two days wandering the rabbit warren of streets that constitutes Avignon amidst spectacular weather. I normally am I great fan of fall weather, but I can't help but enjoy this prolonged summer, even if it was windy enough to knock me down today! Yesterday I began at the Palais de Papes. While I have seen many pictures of the outside of the palace, I did not know that there were well-preserved frescoes inside. Apparently, the Avignon popes hired Italian artists in order to demonstrate that Avignon was a legitimate papacy. My favorite frescoes were in the papal bedroom. The walls were decorated with various aristocratic hunting scenes, flora and fauna, including fantastical animals, and various patterns of leaves and trees. The colors were amazingly well preserved, especially considering the fact that the entire palace was transformed into a barracks during the French Revolution.

     My next stop was Le Pont St. Benezet, birthplace of the folk song "Sur Le Pont D'Avignon," and apparently of a 12th c. shepherd named Benezet who was forced to perform miracles in order to convince Avignon officials that God has told him to build a bridge. I have never seen a bridge with not one, but three chapels built into it! Much of the rest of my day was spent getting lost and stumbling upon various old churches and convents, ranging from 12th century Romanesque to 17th century Neo-Gothic. I even found a few Roman ruins, including part of the Forum's foundation wall, near the Place D'Horloge.

Palais de Papes, Avignon

Of Pigeons and Garden Beasts

     One of the great things about a trip that is three months long instead of a week or two is that there is time to just sit and enjoy what you see. In Paris, I sat in the Tuileries gardens and fed the pigeons. I must say, French pigeons are much more daring and friendly than American pigeons. One sat next to me on my bench in the Tuileries and patiently waited for me to feed him while his fellows say below. Another pigeon joined me in the Starbucks inside the Gare du Lyon and even wandered behind the counter. Now in Avignon, I have not only seen similarly behaved pigeons, but also sat next to a grotto in the Palais de Papes gardens and fed the resident papal turtle and his fellow carp in the pond. I am not normally a feeder of wildlife, but there is something very "vacationly" about sitting in a garden feeding animals.

The Grotto of Turtles and Carp, Gardens of the Palais de Papes, Avignon

The Art of Planning

     Today's great adventure was figuring out how to get to the Avignon Centre train station and then from there how to purchase a ticket from the machine equipped only with my atrocious French. The adventure was complicated by the fact that in France, or at least in Avignon, free wifi (the actual name, mind you) costs money. You must pick a brand and purchase some air time and then hope that your brand is available when you need it. All the town squares have wifi networks available, you just have to find the squares that host your network. Mine, unfortunately, was not available at the train station so I couldn't check to see what days I had chosen for my various trips on my un-updated OneNote notebook. I had to wander around until I found a square that had my network, then head back and buy my ticket. I am slightly nervous that I did it incorrectly, because the ticket has no times on it, only Aller/Retour, so hopefully I can just hop on and off like a bus. Otherwise, I just wasted €75!

     Tomorrow I head to Aix-en-Provence, the former Aqua Sextiae, as well as the oppidum of Entremont, which fell to the Romans in 123 BCE, right in my dissertation time period. This will be my first experience of Roman ruins as a dedicated historian instead of an overly excited college student, though I am still overly excited for the experience!