I have to go to Avignon in a fortnight

You may or may not remember that line from Ever After. We of course had to precede our trip with a viewing of that film. So, here's a little tour of Avignon:

The cute little city walls

First thing we had to do after getting off the train was of course, get ice cream. What else?

Old buildings...

A pretty garden. It was very Neverland-esque.

And you can't go to Avignon without visiting le pont (the 12th-century bridge)--le pont Bénézet. This little bridge is quite well known among children all over France, thanks to the little nursery rhyme song. Luckily our friend at the office, Daniele, taught it to us before we came so we felt like we were all in the know.

The famous song:

Sur le pont d'Avignon, on y danse, on y danse,

sur le pont d'Avignon, on y danse tous en rond. 

Les messieurs font comme ca, 

et les dames font comme ca.

(Repete le refrain...)

On the bridge of Avignon, we all dance, we all dance, 

on the bridge of Avignon, we all dance round and round

The gentlemen do this, (here's where you make kind of a bowing motion with your arms) 

and the ladies do this (same arm motion)

(Repeat the chorus)

We heard all the little kids singing it on the bridge. It was adorable. 

This bridge was the first one built across the giant Rhone river. From here you can only see about half the width of the river, since that's a big island in the middle there.

And, here we are dancing. Sur le pont. 

"et les dames font commmme ca"

This picture pretty much sums up how we felt about the audioguide. SO boring. Allow me to save you a bit of pain in your life: if you ever go to Avignon, skip the audioguides. ALL of them. They literally just put in every single boring fact about every single thing about the bridge, in no particular order. Kill me.

We just stopped listening.

Next stop was le palais des papes: The Popes' Palace. Built at the end of the 1200s, this was where the popes hung out from 1309 to 1423 during that big schism. You know the one...

Complete with another horribly boring audioguide. 

This room was where they held meetings. As Jacqueline said, This is the room where the Great Apostasy took place. Just in case you were wondering. Pretty cool, huh? Not... but kind of.

I thought these little sculptures were so funny. I can just imagine the sculptor's friends being like, "You should do one of me holding up a book like this!" (or suggesting one of the other silly poses that they were making) and the sculptor was like, "haha, yeah that'd be funny." My imagination makes me laugh.

 Nothing says catholicism like wine-making...

The cathedral next door, also built during the 12th century.

After that, we took a little tour of the "back streets" of Avignon, which featured this water wheel. It was so fun and interesting. 

We stocked up on some oldy treats and were off!

Avignon was just adorable. It's fun being able to visit a place with SO much history--so much that there are nursery rhyme songs written about it!