Skip to main content

Euro Adventures Pt 7 - The Medieval Town of Avignon

Today we head off to the town of Avignon today - one of the oldest medieval towns in France. It houses the only other home of past Popes other than the Vatican. We are lucky enough to have been arriving the same day as the popular Avignon Festival which happens every July and is a massive performing arts festival. 

We had a long 6-7 hour drive to reach our hostel - it was a really bumpy and windy drive so I found myself feeling very ill, we stopped for a picnic lunch and were very surprised to find the strangest squat/drop toilets I have ever seen before in my life... In Australia we have long drops... But we have nothing like this. I was going to give it a try for the sake of this blog but I chickened out. I took a picture too... 



After a long hot drive and a couple of toilet stops we finally arrived at our hostel - WHICH HAD A POOL!!! Noddy gave us an hour and a half of free time before we headed into the old city of Avignon. Alysha and I were straight into that pool - so refreshing. We freshened up and headed into the city where we had a walking tour, Noddy pointed out the Palais Du Pope - the Palace of the Pope, the famous Opera building and the main shopping street. Then we were set free on the town. 



The Avignon Festival is an annual performing arts festival where the performers can showcase their talents on the streets, or try to get you to buy tickets to their show. Some people in our tour went down to the river for a picnic, some did shopping, Alysha and I went and found a nice restaurant in the main square - we were right in the centre of the festival, performers were playing instruments or dancing and it was an amazing atmosphere!! 



We walked around the town a lot, had a lot of local performers mistake us for French people - a woman actually had a full conversation with me without realising I didn't understand her... I just said merci boucoup and au revoir and walked away - it was soooooooo funny. There were heaps of funky markets with great handmade jewellery and even a lady doing henna tattoos. We made our way to the top gardens of the Palais Du Pope and enjoyed the stunning views. It is truly sooooo surreal to be in a place like this. I took a minute to just soak it in, Avignon is such an old town and had seen soooooooooo much over the centuries. Amazing. We watched a short street performers show while we had some fruity sorbet, which was hilarious. 



We managed to find our way out of the town the gates of the old town where we were meeting the bus to get back to our hostel. Everyone is buzzing for Barca - that will be our first BIG night out. So all of the girls headed back to their rooms to fake tan, shave their legs and prep for tomorrow night. Spain - you better watch out!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Euro Adventures Pt 22 - Eat, Sleep, Beach, Repeat

Another day in paradise, Mykonos you beautiful place. I woke early with a coughing fit to find everyone was home and in bed - absolutely dead to the world. Once a couple of the girls woke up we headed down for some brekkie - the included brekkie was absolute shithouse so we ordered from the breakfast menu at the restaurant. Such a good life choice. Plus the view!  Noddy joined us for a chat and a coffee - Greek coffee is pretty different, very very strong - I was kind of in love with it. Delish. We headed back to the room and the girls had naps while I caught up some overdue blogging - even though without wifi I couldn't post anything. The camping ground did have wifi but it was so bad that you could only connect of you were standing right next to the bar and even then it dropped in and out. LAME!  When everyone was awake we changed into our swimmers and headed down to the beach at our back door. The beach was absolutely spectacular. For once it wasn't all pointy sharp rocks t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Euro Adventures Pt 5 - A Magical Day In Paris

So on our original own for today was a full travel day to the Swiss Alps - but, praise the Lord we were told before we went to bed last night that we were doing a night drive and we could spend the day exploring Paris - because they didn't want us to miss out on the majesty of Paris! YAYYYYYYYY - there were a lot of happy of people on our tour. We had until 4 to do whatever we pleased. Stoked. Paris was the place Alysha was the most looking forward so we have been able to somewhat make her dreams come true! We woke up nice and early, had a breakfast of champions (NOT), there was questionable looking eggs, bacon, very sweet toast, croissants, pain o chocolait, yogurt and cereal. We are kind of over pastries already haha - thank goodness we are leaving Framce today, might get something different for a change in Switzerland. We ventured out to find the Metro, which was a very worrying as our hostel was in such a Ghetto part of Paris, the outskirts, the slums, I don't know what the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Euro Adventures Pt 6 - The Swiss Alps

So we were about an hour and a half out of the Swiss Alps and a massive sound hissed from the bus... It was as if a tyre had exploded... But nope... The engine... Over heated... We were stuck at the service stop for about an hour and a half while our awesome Polish bus driver did what he could to get us there... It was about 4am by the time we got there... Oh my god.  In Switzerland there was the option to do a skydive out of a helicopter - which a few brave people chose to do. There was also a train up to the top of the Alps where you could do a few things - and the Alps were snowy and cool. Alysha and I had decided to have a chill day - we did some washing up and had a short nap. We went for a stroll around Interlarken (the town we stayed in) took in the magnificent views of the mountains and admired the gorgeous houses. We went into a few pubs and enjoyed some ice cold ciders which was amazing - it was incredibly hot. Noddie told us we were following the heat wave that was hitti...
Post a Comment
Read more