Pont du Gard & Avignon

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5/9/12

 Being partial to good coffee we returned this morning to our local breakfast place. That might have been the last time of enjoying the place because in the attempt of stopping the lovely waitress tripping on his camera bag, Mario bend to shift it, and coming back up hit the coffee cups she was carrying with his head.

The coffee poured all over her front, staining her light pink blouse, but luckily not burning her. On Mario’s apology she just said: “C’est ne pas grave, c’est ne pas grave!!!” and brought out new coffees in a jiffy.

We were quite sorry to leave Arles. Such a great place, and due to the finished school holidays not too overrun.

In just 35 minutes we arrived at the “Pont du Gard” the biggest Roman Aquaduct.

Except of twelve arches at the end all of the 2000-year-old bridge is still standing – amazing! There are several good viewpoints and many walks to do ones you enter the area via a flat car park fee. The museum gives a great insight into the history and the engineering of the Pont and of the tools that were used by the workers. The gravestones of the hundreds maybe thousands of workers who died in the process showed the tools used depending on the job they were doing.

In pm we drove on to Avignon where we had booked into a hotel “Logis” in Les Angles.

Vow! Avignon! The town wall, Palace of the Popes  and surrounds seem to come right out of a Hollywood studio – only in giant proportions!

We had a mediocre dinner on the Place d’ Horloge, but who cares in mids of this scenery! An aged guitarist singing French chansons further enhanced the atmosphere.

We returned to the hotel to have a good bye drink in the vine covered garden with our friends.

 

6/9/12

This morning Eva and Mario joined us in another stroll of Avignon to the old area of Tie-dying Rue de Teintures with its canal and old water wheels and to Les Halles (the big market). From there we went up to the high “Jardin du Rochers de Doms” offering a beautiful view onto the Rhone and city.

After sadly waving good bye to our friends we spend the afternoon with doing our laundry at the lavarie and relaxing at the pool of the hotel.

 7/9/12

Beautiful weather again, temperature in the low 30ties.

After a substantial breakfast at the hotel and some entries for the website we travelled part by bus part by taxi to Europcar only to find the door closed for lunch. We should have learned by now that between 12.30 and 2.00pm its siesta time. The taxi driver took us out of pity to a nearby American steakhouse where we spent the next 1.5 hour nibbling on a shared tapas platter and writing postcards.

This evening we drove to Villenieuve lès Avignon and found ourselves squeezing through the narrow medieval cobblestoned streets uphill to a 1316 fortress of St. André. All around the fortress the parking areas were full of expensive cars and people in beautiful summer dresses and suits were streaming into the manicured gardens.

Again we admired the dress style and elegance of the French.

Moving forward we saw that the gardens were full of modern sculptures, surrounded by groups of people chatting and drinking wine. We were, for once, the only English speaking in shorts and loafers, and, as by now we realized that we had crashed an art party for the rich and famous we stopped short of cueing up for drinks and hors d’oeuves and just tried to dawdle inconspicuously through the exhibit halting now and then to admire and comment on one of the works of art.

 Our tenacity was rewarded by a beautiful sunset colouring the walls of St. André in a soft orange and illuminating the golden Mary of Avignon on the other side of the river.

After another squeeze down and into the “centre ville” we ate at a little Tunisian snack bar and it was one of the best dinners we had so far.     

© Austin Robinson 2019