France Trip Post #10 - Avignon

Friday, May 23

We got up and at 'em early on Friday to get to the train station by about 8 am. We stopped in the ticket office to get tickets to Avignon as soon as we could for the day, but with our rail passes we didn't need tickets for it at all! So we wrote down the different train times and hopped onto the first one. Avignon isn't very far from Marseille, so we were there by 9:45 am.

Avignon is a cute little city that has some really cool history. We got off the train and started walking toward the Palais des Papes (Palace of the Popes). Along the way we saw this cool old church, so we stopped in the gardens for a little bit and took a couple of pictures. Then we saw a Monoprix, so we stopped in to buy some chocolate breads and cherry coke. :) Somehow we got all turned around coming out of the Monoprix and realized that we were walking the wrong way when we arrived at that church again. Ah, well.

When we got to the Palace, we got tickets for the self-guided tour. We asked the person if we could still get a student rate with our BYU IDs, as this was our graduation trip and he said we could. :) There were some interesting videos and signs around that explained the history and development of the palace. We took our time going through it all.

When we came out of the palace, we sat in the square to have a snack and watch the street performers. Then we decided to go find the big church in Avignon. We found a different church first and stepped inside for a look around. Eventually we found the one we were looking for, but it was closed for renovation anyway. There was a pretty garden path leading up the hill next to it though, so we decided to take a walk up there. We found a beautiful overview of the city and asked some other tourists to take a picture for us.

After that we made our way back to the train station. It wasn't too late, but we'd done all the things we wanted to do. We got onto the first train back to Marseille. It had a lot of stops along the way, so it took a while, but we got back to Marseille around 4 pm. We decided to head over to La Canebiere to get some food and to look for some souvenirs to bring home.

Back at our apartment, we mixed up some cous cous, cheese cubes, and olives for a snacky salad and we spent some times cleaning and listening to our book some more. Eventually, we got ready for our dinner date. :)

We'd been eyeing the restaurants around our apartment since we got there and we decided that we would splurge one night for dinner. They aren't really formal restaurants, but sometimes I like getting dressed up to go out to dinner, so we did. Spencer's a good sport. :) We went to one called Chez Paul. The dinner was nice, and it was so fun to have a formal night out together. I got a tomato and mozzarella salad and salmon, and Spencer got a shrimp appetizer with duck for his main course. We both had chocolate mousse for dessert.

We got back to our apartment with enough time to listen to our book and then talk for a while before bed. It's like every day of our trip was a date! And somehow, Spencer wasn't even tired of me. :) We spent a while talking about our baby girl, some of our hopes for her and things we are nervous about. We talked about how very blessed we are. It was a really good day.

Avignon's City Wall

I like these big trees. 

The little church by the train station. 

Same church.

Inside the Palace of the Popes

Little doors!

Aaand a gargoyle. 

More Palace

They had a nice view of the city. 

A big hall at the palace. They had weird modern and slightly risque artwork on the walls. :/ 

Really cool doors. They were vandalized (notice the beheaded statues)  when the palace was used as a barracks during some revolution. 

The (wrong)  church we found. 

Cherry coke looked really good to me every time I'd see it in vending machines that week, so we got some. 

The big church we were looking for, but couldn't go into. 

The garden path. That's an olive tree. 

And a little waterfall. 

Ready for our date night out! 

Spencer with his duck. It was really good!