Avignon

A lovely five-hour pause between classes today has given me ample time to catch up on emails and update my CV and eliminate every other plausible excuse for not writing a blog, so at last here's the first of my (hopefully two) updates on Provence.

Once I'd had my fill of day-trips for the first week of winter break, I went with my friends Vanessa and Dan to visit a couple of Provençale cities.

Our first stop was Avignon, which is about a three-hour train ride from Saint-Etienne. The countryside seemed to transform the farther south we went, and what I'd thought was decent enough (if still typically gloomy) weather in Sainté soon gave way to clear blue skies.

Some highlights from Avignon:

The fact that Avignon's still got a fully-intact wall around it is sometimes eclipsed by its more famous attractions, but it was really cool to see as we rode in on the bus from the TGV train station.

The Palais des Papes (Popes' Palace) is one of the bigger sights to see in Avignon, as it was (one of several) seats of the Papacy during the Great Schism in the fourteenth century. Very much living up to palatial dimensions, the Palais was huge but had an excellent layout of information. An audioguide was included with admission, and I'm pretty sure you could spend a whole day in there if you took the time to listen to everything it said.

And here at last is the famous Pont Saint-Bénézet, better known as the Pont d'Avignon. This picture doesn't give the most comprehensive view of it, but it was the best I could do short of crossing the river! It was constructed between 1177 and 1185, supposedly at the behest of 12-year-old Saint Bénézet, who received a divine order to build a bridge out over the Rhône at Avignon. We couldn't figure out exactly why it doesn't span the whole river (and I've since been too lazy to do what would probably be an easy Google search and find out), but my guess is that they had to shorten it to allow bigger boats to pass, since it's not a very tall bridge.

Here's the view from the end of the bridge, looking back towards Avignon and the Palais des Papes.

Annnd finally a random assortment of other photos I took around town, including the awesome upside-down iron elephant statue right in front of the Palais des Papes: