Provence

After a couple of days of being shown the sights of Nice by Sarah, and then a day or so on my own to explore, I was ready for what in my mind was the main event of my trip – our two-day excursion to Provence.

When I was younger, and just out of college, I had the opportunity to live in Provence for seven months. A professor of mine had a friend who was going there on a Fellowship to write a book about Chaucer. This professor had an 8-year-old daughter who needed looking after and tutoring, so that was my ticket to France, so to speak. I had a three-month stint in that job, followed by picking grapes for a month for a local farmer, followed by yet another job as an au pair for a French family. The first four months I lived in a little village in the Vaucluse called Le Barroux, and my job as an au pair relocated me to Avignon.

Sarah and I left her apartment early in the morning, taking the bus to the airport to pick up our rental car. The drive west from Nice was uneventful and pleasant, taking us away from the coastline, and palm trees of the resort area into the austere and rocky countryside.

NOTE: I have to mention here that traveling by car in France, on toll roads is not cheap! Gasoline is expensive (about $10 per gallon), and traveling on the Autoroute du Sud between Nice and Avignon probably cost us a total of about 20 Euros (approximately $30) one way. At least they drive on the right side of the road, unlike our white-knuckle experiences of the previous summer in Scotland!

We got off the autoroute in Avignon, and headed for the train station, because I had heard that there was free parking there. We didn’t find the free parking lot, but it was inexpensive enough. I wanted to make my way into the city via the route I remembered - the Rue de la République (does any French town NOT have a street by this name?) – which ends at the Place de l’Horloge (Plaza of the Clock). I remembered this place from 30+ years ago as being very open, and surrounded by restaurants. It was still full of wonderful restaurants, but all of them had covered seating in front of the restaurants as well, which gave an appearance of clutter to the Plaza.

Sarah and I found one that offered regional food at a decent price, so we passed an hour or so having a nice lunch, and watching other tourists walk by. Then we proceeded on to the Palais des Papes.

The Palais, of course, hadn’t changed in the 34 years since I had been there. Come to think of it, it probably hasn’t changed since the 14th century. The grounds of the nearby park had added a little snack pavilion, which detracted from the overall atmosphere, as divinity’s nod to tourism. From the nearby overlook, there is a view of the Rhône River, from whence one can see the Pont St. Bénézet, the famous bridge that has been immortalized in the children’s song. This was a familiar view; when I worked here au pair, I used to bring the children there. Looking across the river, one can see Villeneuve-les-Avignon, and the tower that used to be the endpoint of the Pont St. Bénézet before most of the bridge was swept away by the swift current of the Rhône. There is also a ruined castle, which from my perspective still looked very romantic – it was hard to tell that it was a ruin from that distance.

I had one other objective while in Avignon – to take a walk past the building where I had lived for three months while working au pair. The building is a protected historic building (The Hotel de Crillon).

Since the endpoint of our day’s journey was Le Barroux, we headed back to our car, took one last admiring glance at the walls of the old city, drove a couple of times in a circle to orient ourselves (the technique of carrier pigeons), and headed off toward Carpentras, and thence to Le Barroux.