avignon

Lauren and I caught the train from Barcelona to Avignon on thursday last week. It was such a pretty journey and we stopped in a little town called Cerbere on the Cote d'azure. The water was crystal clear and the bluest blue you have ever seen. absolutely beautiful!

Avignon itself is a very pretty town. Its major attraction for tourists is that popes palace. There is a tourist train you can catch that skirts the village and shows you all the sights. You can even take your video camera along so that you can get a slow pan of the Roman ruins. make sure you don't miss anything!

HA. Lauren and I spent the entire time hanging out with Mel and Burrowes!  I didn't even get a photo of the popes palace. It was so good to see them, to catch up with burrowes, tell him all the adelaide goss! We spent every night drinking cheap rose and playing cards. It was so excellent!!!

These are the roan ruins, LC mel and I went there to sit after our exhausting shopping strip expedition. there are fountains where you can dip your feet!

This is the view over the bridge between the island where we stayed and the walled city of Avignon. 

The large structure you can see is the pope's Palace. 

We were taken to the amazing avignon markets where we bought lots of yummy cheap veggies, delicious goats cheese and some octopus which is really cheap and then we went back to the apartment and made a feast. The method we used to cook the octopus was a bit dubious, but it tasted ok. 

This is the vertical garden on the outside wall of the Market.

The next day M&B decided to take us to the dodgy side of town so that we could get a real taste of Avignon. After coming from barcelona with its certain street charm, there was nothing dodgy about the dodgy side of Avignon. There was an old mill with giant wheels. While walking back home we found a cute little restaurant with a set menu and decided to go out to dinner. It was lovely french food, I had beef daube which is the cheeks of the cow. It was very rich but very tender and totally delicious. 

Later Burrowes decided to try some of his home-pickled octopus. He had freaked us all out about botulism as his pickling methods were probably less than desirable. Nevertheless i tried a little and it was quite good. Mel had some and didn't feel so good the next day!

The F1 was on, so we didnt do much on sunday. we went back to the market and got some more cheese and figs, almonds and yeast free baguettes. We sat around all afternoon while the race was on and then LC and i went back to the hostel for a nap. fun times. 

On Monday we went on a day trip to the town of Nimes, about 30 mins outside of Avignon. It is a very sweet little town with lots of roman Buildings. This colosseum was built in 1BC.

This is Mel and I in front of the colosseum. 

I was so overcome by the oldness i had to have a nap. 

That is Burrowes on another roman building. It was very impressive. Inside you could go and watch a 3D film about the happenings in the town when the Romans were around. 

There was a beautiful park area with aqueducts. 

Inside one of the roman structures. 

heart and cross bones

progress

An arch. Its hard to believe something is so old and there is nothing holding it up apart from other components of the arch

graffiti 1746

The Grotto

That night we invited a guy from our hostel to come hang out with us. He was from New Orleans and is moving to Paris for a year. He was pretty interesting- he edits a journal about fungus. did you know that rust is a fungus? We took him down to the local tranny bar for a drink. 

Next morning/afternoon we woke up too late for just about everything, the markets were closed and the boulangerie was closed for la sieste. We got crappy quiches for breaky and then went back to the tranny bar because they do the best coffee. We decided to get some tapas too- it was sooooo good. 

We spent too much time sitting around and Lauren and i missed our train, so we had to spend another night. 
That night we played a game of home-made monopoly! Mel and Burrowes had painstakingly recreated the classic boardgame using the cardboard from old cigarette packets. We had fun making up the chance and community chest cards!!!

Avignon street skull

Next day we went back to the markets for some quiche, but the quiche place was on holidays. Instead we decided to go to the best patisserie in Avignon and get quiche from there. 

We stopped for macaroons on the way. 

And then went to the tranny bar for Cafe!

I tried taking lots of photos to make up for how few i had taken of all the fun things we had been doing. It got a bit old quite quickly. 

This was our last goodbye! or should i say a Bientot! It was so lovely spending time with Mel and Burrowes, hopefully we will catch up again while LC and i are still on the continent.