Late Post #3 - Avignon

Look at this silly girl. Walking through Avignon to our hostel across the river Rhone from the city.

Beautiful Avignon with the Palais du Papes in the background

Avignon was this wonderful walled city on the river Rhone. It had very narrow streets and lots of cobblestones. It's called the City of the Popes because they have this big palace that the popes used to live in.

We went in and listened to the extremely boring audio guide. As you can see, Jill is obviously moved by what they are saying.

It was neat but not worth the 10€ But we did get to go onto th

e Pont d'Avignon, this famous bridge with a song about it and everythin

g. "Sur la pont d'Avignon..." something something something. They dance or something, I dunno. The bridge was more impressive to look at than stand on. But there were lots of fish that were eating the seaweed or something. These huge things! And lots, like 20 or so. I really enjoyed those fish..

Here's the bridge. It used to go all the way across but some flood came and destroyed part of it. Our hostel was on the other side of the river Rhone, the wrong side I think. Lots of people would come at night and park their cars along the river and blast dance music and smoke hookah pipes. It was interesting. We didn't feel the safest coming back from dinner one night at 1am, but there was a security guard at the hostel so it wasn't that bad. We were afraid of being thieved though, but luck prevailed!

Here's the outside of the wall. It's like this right around the whole city, very cool. It felt neat being inside, like we were safe and cosy or something.

The meal we had on the first night in Avignon is one of my favourite memories. We had some trouble finding it, but Merci Tonton was finally reached at 9.30pm. It had the cutest little courtyard/patio out back and had about 5 tables or so, really intimate and, like I said, so cute. The waitress knew we were English so she avoided us like the plague. She was nice about it, but it took awhile to get our order for wine in. She brought out the blackboard with the menu on it, all in French of course. We had a tough time

translating it, so again the waitress avoided us, but she asked the other tables if anyone spoke English. This larger group of people beside us helped us out and told us the key words in the menu: beef, seafood, lamb. Normally we would have been able to pick those words out but it said like sirloin and stuff, not boeuf. No good. But they were really helpful and we had fun with it.

This is a picture of the entree (which is their appetizers). It was toast with some puree spread on it, SO delicious, sauteed onions, and little fish which I found out later were sardines!! It was delicious though! It was a suggestion from our neighbouring table.

And then after the meal was all done, after being total goofs and having a fabulous time, the waitress, who warmed up to us, and her husband, the chef, invited us to have a very French drink - Armagnac. It was vile. Jill pawned hers off on me, the jerk. She wasn't feeling all that well though, I force fed her tap water and made her sick again. But the people sang this French song about Vancouver and it was so funny. We stumbled out of there around 1 in the morning. What a lovely place.