AVIGNON – France (Wed 23 Sept)

We left Aix en Provence today bound for Avignon, but first a stopover in Arles was in order. When we first arrived in town we were informed that Van Gogh lived here for a couple of years about 1888.

But more remarkable id the Roman Theatre and Amphitheatre. The Amphitheatre was built in the last 10 years of the first century, and is undergoing a refurb at the moment, at a cost of 45-50 million euros. When you watch those guys working you can understand why. What they are doing is painstakingly slow and labour intensive. Each stone in the building is shored up and taken out. That stone is then laid down and the whole surface is examined by a team of people. It is then either repaired, or replaced, so that they can start on the next stone. As we stood there watching them do this, you can understand why it takes so long, but you do wonder if there is a more efficient way of operating (especially when the checking of the surface area is performed by tapping the entire surface with a small stone to check for weak spots). But then when it has taken over 1900 years to come to this, well, what’s the hurry?

In the mean time the arena is still in operation with the ‘Finale Trophee’ Bullfight happening here on 11 October. It’s a shame that we will miss it.

After finishing our wander through this amazing little town we headed to Pont du Gard (of postcard fame). An extrememly cool bridge that was once the pride of Roman architecture, supporting an aquaduct. It hasn’t been used for this purpose for quite some time, but we did find the graffiti in the stones of the bridge interesting. According to the inscribed dates this graffiti dates back to dates like 1801 and 1753. That alone is pretty cool.

When we arrived in Avignon we were very impressed with the service from our accommodation. It seems to be run by a fairly young couple who are very eager to help, offering free maps of the city, and directions to everything that the city had to offer.

So as soon as we had settled in we went on a walk of discovery. We found lots of old buildings of every description. The thing that appealed to me was the old faded advertising signs on the sides of old plaster buildings, advertising brands and businesses that no longer exist. How cool is that. During our wanderings we stumbled upon ‘La Place Saint Didier’. This was a site of public executions. In 1692, a clumsy executioner was stoned and then lynched by a crowd of spectators that were appalled by his actions. The convict was pardoned and cut free. He regained consciousness 24 hours later.

We finally found the Palis des Papes, about the time it was getting dark, but we couldn’t help but be impressed by its size. This was the Papel Court from 1309 to 1377, under Pope Clement V. It is the largest Gothic palace in the world and was built as a fortified palace. Very impressive.