Sur le Pont d'Avignon

Ahhhhhh... Someone should change the name of Avignon to heaven. After a 2 ½ hour drive that was supposed to only take 1hour (thanks Jim) we arrived in the picturesque city of Avignon in Provence. We wasted no time in parking Mulder in a perfect spot overlooking the river Rhone right adjacent to le Pont d’Avignon- the camping ground strangely enough shared this name – Camping du Pont d’Avignon. Basically if the bridge still stood in its entirety we would be right under it!

Mulder's view

Once we had parked we ascertained that there were hot douches and toilet paper!!! BONUS!!! LUXURY!!!

After working out we were onto a good thing it was finally time to explore the city. We took a free shuttle ferry over from the Ile de la Barthelasse (Island where we were staying) back over to Avignon. Here we climbed the 100’s of steps up to the top of the rampart where we had a great view back over the Ile, Villeneuve le Avignon – the home of the Cardinals in the 14^th century and the distant Mont Ventoux.

 

Sur le Pont d'Avignon... lalala (thats as much of the song as I know

Right.....there is Mont Ventoux

After admiring the view we walked through the Roche des Doms (gardens) down to the Dalais de Paps – the Popes Palace – Home of the Papacy in the 14^th century – life’s tough for the Pope!

The Popes personal vineyard for making wine

Avignon's imposing Cathedral spire

After this we moved onto the Place de L-Horloge (Main square) and noticed an abundance of street performers. It was here we had discovered we had arrived smack in the middle of Marche du Festival – the Festival of Avignon for Performers in Art. Everyone was putting on demo shows and handing out flyers promoting the full shows for the evening (pity they were in French). I am really not sure where they managed to fit all of the productions because there were so many.

The posters afor all of the shows

We wandered the inner city some more and had our first European milkshake – I was hanging out for it even though it was 5.5Euro! Missing my Milk!

Dreaming of milkshakes.... mmmm Milkshake!

 We headed back to the campsite for some pre-dinner wine and cheese and a shower before heading down to the Rhone to jump aboard our dinner cruise boat at 8pm. It was filled with oldies but was still fun!

Moonlighting as the Federson's - French translation of Sandison?

Dinner on the cruise

The meal on the boat was quite delicious too. The cruise took us past the Pont St Benezet aka the Pont d’Avignon, back down past Avignon around the point of Ile de la Barthelasse and around the other side of the island past Villeneuve les Avignon. Here we got some semi-sunset views and by the time we arrive back at the dock at Avignon we could take night photos of the city and bridge.

We had many poses but i have selected this one as being suitable for the blog :)

Again appologies for the blurred photo - Night vision is not the camera's strong point
But this is the bridge at night - you may have had to have been there...

We missed out on getting the washing done – may have been due to the copious amounts of wine consumed, which turned out to be fortunate as a big storm came through overnight.