Avignon

On Saturday, February 26, we finished our drive through the Gorges of Verdon and headed west toward Avignon to spend the night. I had been to Avignon before, in October of 1999, on a road trip from Madrid with Dave Turner, Kim Kurtzberg (both still single at that time), and Fred Roe. At that time, Dave was just starting to date Kim....or trying to start to date Kim. Now, almost seven years later, it seemed an apt place to stop after vacationing with Kim's parents - now Dave's in-laws.

Avignon is an old city that would make any toursit board salivate. The city still has its walls from the middle ages. From the Rhone river, which Avignon nestles against, the towered walls look much the same as they would have 500 years ago. (Or so one can imagine.) Of course, on the opposite side the city and it's suburbs have spilled out of the walls so haphazardly that you can hardly tell where the new town ends and the old town starts. The picture below shows one of the towers in the old city walls.
The high point in Avignon's history occured in the 1300's when the popes had to vacate Rome for safer places. In Avignon, they built the Palais des Papes - the Palace of the Popes - as their home in exile. In it's time, it must have been posh inside with decorations and treasure. Today, the exterior architecture is impressive but the interior is all stone grey and looks like an archeological dig. The intro picture is an exterior view of the Palace, as is the photo below.

A few miles up the road the popes took possession of the land land on the banks of the Rhone, built a château for summer vacations, and planted vineyards. They held this land until the French took it back just after the revolution. The wine still grows there - the famous Châteauneuf du Pape that is almost as affordable as a room at the Four Seasons resort in the month of August.

Of all the stories of the history of Avignon, the one that strikes me most is that of the Plague. In the 1340's, the Black Death was killing so many so quickly the Church and the cities were overwhelmed. Pope Clement VI blessed the River Rhone as holy ground so that the people could throw the dead into the river and still take comfort providing a Christian burial.

Theresa and I stayed in the Hotel d'Europe, just inside the city walls. This was the same hotel that Kim, Dave, Fred and I stayed in when we visited in 1999. The rooms were much smaller and spartan than I remembered....and certainly a step down from our previous nights in the Four Seasons Provence. However, I swear that Theresa and I had the same room that Fred and I shared in 1999. Here is the view from our bedroom window of the hotel courtyard. It feels like a balcony in a Shakespeare play where you can almost hear the words "Romeo, Romeo...where fore art thou???"