Tag Archives: europe

We get a car and explore the environs

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Late Thursday afternoon we took the bus to the TGV station to fetch our rental car. I had booked a EuropCar because none of the US companies had an option for English on the French site, nor did they allow a return to a different city. Our plan was to rent in Avignon, tour around outside the city, then return the car in Nice. EuropCar was perfect, had lower rates, and the young man who handled the rental was a pleasure.

It was well after 3 so we drove directly to Pont du Gard. This is one mammoth aqueduct, built in the first century CE and in use until the fourth century. If you want to be amazed by this engineering feat go to Wikipedia or watch a film on YouTube. It ran for 31 miles, weaving around hills and adjusting the slope over the course of the run as needed. At the last section the slope was incredibly shallow. The concept and execution, not to mention the guts, to embark on such a crazy project is unimaginable. It turned out we were very lucky to go in late afternoon when the shadow of the mammoth structure was visible on the downstream river. We walked across and back, trying to imagine the now gone third set of arches which were taken down in order to use the stone for buildings nearby.

Looking west
Looking east with the sun behind the bridge

Uzes and Nimes

Saturday we drove to Uzes and Nikes. Uzes is a very small, and sadly getting smaller (now around 8500) town whose market day we wanted to enjoy, so that was our first stop. Less than 45 minutes away and so friendly, we had a lot of fun. First on the list was coffee and a croissant and walking down the main street only 10 yards or so brought us to Le Vieux Cafe. It was chilly and windy, yet there were 10 or so customers sitting outside. Let me take a moment to say that the French sit outside to drink and eat in weather that is way, way too cold for us Americans, and there’s not a gas heater anywhere. In we went and within a few minutes a man swings by, “Bonjour madame, bonjour monsieur, voulez vous un boisson” and 60 seconds later we had our café crème and croissants. Delicious.

We took the first side street and were enveloped by the market. The wind was fierce (gusts up to 48mph) and it felt quite cold but the crowd and the bustle of the weekly market kept us moving and somewhat warm. That wind. Every now and then an umbrella fell over, branches were falling, and the trees in bloom were shedding seeds that were everywhere on everything. And it was fun. We decided to put together enough food for an evening meal because I insisted every day that we take advantage of the custom of a big lunch—and the lunch specials that every restaurant offers and we planned to do a lot that day—I could already imagine not wanting to budge once we got back to the hotel (I was right about that). And, I confess, it is just fun to buy things at an outdoor market where everyone is in a market mood, I have a lot of questions I can ask in my rudimentary French, and who can resist the cheeses, the breads, the olives…

Le Vieux Cafe, so old and filled with stuff that appears to have been there for a few generations.
One of the MANY honey displays. There are stores everywhere we’ve been that sell only honey.
Uzes is such a lovely little town. I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the herald on the roof.

We decided to head to Nimes and assume we’d get there within normal lunch hours. We’d walked pretty much the entire town of Uzes anyway. Off we set, excited to see more Roman ruins—an arena, a temple, and a tower—and experience a different town. Well, wow, very different. We were surprised that Nimes was so big, much bigger than Avignon, at least the part within the city walls that we had gotten to know, and it made Uzes seem like a closet. We drove through this city, with wide streets and confusing directions, searching for a place to park that would be near at least one of the sites. Happily there is an underground parking garage adjacent to the arena/coliseum. We came up to the very big plaza to see the wind whipping water from a large fountain across the plaza in a cloud. We let the wind push us to the Office de Tourisme where we confirmed that the three things we wanted to see were within walking distance. “Mais, oui.” Off we set, but first, lunch.

The plaza the tourist office woman sent us to is clearly a tourist place—a small square ringed with restaurants, lots of outdoor seating, not too crowded but many people eating and talking. We were a bit dismayed, having avoided these settings as much as possible but too hungry to venture further. We entered one that advertised a gratin brandade (baked salt cod, usually with potatoes). We’d been so lucky regarding restaurants and feared our streak would end. Nope. It was still very windy so we went inside, and small tables close together were pretty packed. We sat and immediately the great table service we have found everywhere was here too. I made a comment to the woman at the next table in French—it was perhaps two feet from us—and she asked if I spoke English. The couple was traveling in their camper from Stuttgart on to Italy and we had a typical friendly conversation. David ordered what her husband was having (linguine with a baked Camembert that he stirred into the pasta, with a side of a small charcuterie) and I got the gratin brandade. Everything was delicious.

The brandade. So good. Potatoes covered with bubbling eggy salt cod.
The arena here is used for events. They are repairing the clay surface.
The view from Le Tour Magne, the last grueling stop on our Roman ruins trek. Yes, gorgeous but might have been my last tower!

Back we drove to Avignon, very very glad we had bought a supper at the market. We dragged ourselves to the room, scarfed down the baguette, cheese, and olives, and packed. We left Avignon the next morning and drove to Arles on our way to Nice.

Skip this if you’re not a museum person

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We love museums. History and art are our favorites, and everywhere we go we spend hours in museums. Really. They are restful, mind-expanding, educational, and for us just plain fun.

I will now tell you about the museums of Avignon and tomorrow will add a bit about Villeneuve-Lez-Avignon. There are some great ones.

Our first day in Avignon we stopped at the Office de Tourisme and discovered there are four free museums—we visited three of them that first day. David and I are into Roman history and we had several day trips we had planned to see Roman ruins. And here we find out that there is a museum of Roman artifacts, Lapidaire Musee, a few doors from the Office de Tourisme. And free! We headed right over there and wow, what a lovely experience if you like Roman stuff.

A single soaring room filled, without feeling crowded, with all these amazing items that were excavated in Avignon, most in the mid 1800s. Best of all as you can see nothing is behind a barrier (except glassware and little ceramics) so you can walk right up and see things close. There was another couple in there with us and I said offhand to the woman “Incroyable, oui?” She nods yes and asks me if I am Spanish—doubtless due to my lousy accent. I say I do speak Spanish thinking that is what she speaks. She asks me where in Spain I am from. I say California, and ask her if SHE is from Spain. No, they are from France. Then we have a mish mash conversation, a melange of French and Spanish. We smile and laugh, then I hear her explaining to her husband what THAT was all about. Needless to say through this first week my French has come more easily and my accent has improved tremendously.

Anyway, get a load of this Roman mosaic. So beautiful.

Next we headed uphill to the Palais de Papes and across the plaza to the Musee Petit Palais. This is a relatively small museum, free, with an extensive collection of medieval paintings, virtually all religious as that’s what artists were expected to paint. The docents were wonderful (yes, I had questions) and were able to follow my French to my delight. But the best part for me was the ground floor exhibit that detailed what the profession of painter entailed in the Middle Ages. The artist who led an atelier with many apprentices was not just an artist and painter. He had to be a project manager, a teacher, a bit of a chemist—mixing colors was an art in itself in addition to a science—and a salesman. Of course! But I had never thought about it and led me to think differently about what art was all about in those days.

Finally, although we were warned it was boring we went inside the Palais de Papes. It is enormous..and we loved it. When you check in you get a tablet that, when aimed at a stand in each room, shows the room as historians believe it looked like in the day. Very cool, and surprising how walls, beams and ceilings were painted as well as the array of furniture. The tablet had loads of information about each room, how it was used, in some cases what it meant. When you get to the chambre de pape (the pope’s bedroom) the uncovered and restored tiles that cover the floor are breathtaking—and they let you walk on them! So neat. We failed to take any pictures inside so you’ll have to visit yourself. It is definitely NOT boring.

We arrive and explore Avignon

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This medieval city, with its circling wall, lovely walking streets, and hospitable people grabbed us from the first morning as we set out for coffee. We had arrived late Tuesday after about 24 hours of travel, easily settled into Hotel Cloitre Saint Louis, and after a quick, delicious, albeit Italian, dinner we fell into the very comfy bed and slept 10 hours. Wednesday we quickly found a sweet little coffee and pastry place, Le Saint Chocolat, and enjoyed our breakfast of croissants and coffee so much we came back every morning this week.

Let‘s be clear, the food here is spectacular. It can’t be that a glass of champagne (for me) and a beer (for David) makes that much of a difference! Our first lunch, at unsung Petit Grand, was delectable. Our supper of soup and tartines (open faced sandwiches) perfect and in a little place right out of a French movie. The lunch in Avignon Villeneuve (across the Rhône), where we sat outside in the little square and talked travel and politics with the folks sitting at the next table—the man so happy to have a chance to speak English and sigh about the turn of events in the US (“This sure isn’t the America of 1945 that saved us from the Nazis, is it?”), and the food scrumptious. Lunch today might have topped them all, but that might also be that for me speaking French is beginning to flow and it made the food—the creamiest of carrot soups and baked goat cheese with honey for David, pate en croute and beef tartare for me—even better. Yeah, great eating that is frankly superior to typical American food in a tourist-y city, ooh la la is all I can say and yes, they say that here.

Yesterday we stopped in the Office de Tourisme to ask about getting a bus to Villeneuve-Lez-Avignon, the “new town” across the Rhône, and the very cordial young woman told us to get off at the Office de Tourisme there and noted that it was market day. We did, and there was the market, right across from the bus stop. Now, we consider the Grand Lake farmers market in Oakland to be pretty darned good, but this one put it to shame. Just watching the French talk, laugh, buy (and everyone seems to reuse containers—glass jars handed over to be filled with olives, bags to be filled with bread, little containers to be filled with humus), and laugh and talk some more was enough entertainment. Drooling over the produce—and the seeming endless array of olives, too—was fun and it made us hungry for lunch. There was even a stand that squeezed fresh juice on the spot.

Though I could have gone straight to a restaurant David was more rational and suggested we head to the castle that we could see from the market.

This small town overflows with history and we marched through a lot of it in the one day we had. The gradual climb to the castle was lovely.

When we got there we thought about whether to buy a ticket but went to the billeteria to see what the deal was. We were quickly convinced to buy 2 twenty euro multi-site tickets and started with the “abbey” and its gardens. Alas, the website for this amazing place is really awful and the information about the restoration in the early twentieth century is buried. The fascinating parts to us are the purchase by a lovely painter, Gustave Fayet, a woman for whom he bought the abbey, Elsa Koenerle, who made it her lifelong work to restore the abbey and especially the gardens with her lifelong “close friend” who lived with them, Genia Lioubow. The gardens are gorgeous, even in their very early spring state. We wandered for at least an hour before walking back down to the square for lunch.

The abbey ground floor where they all lived is now a gallery of Fayet’s painting and drawings. They are lovely. I include here only one, a portrait of his wife and baby.

The next post will cover a few of the museums in Avignon and Villeneuve-Lez-Avignon. After several long days I am heading to bed.