What do you know about Avignon ... maybe the song 'Sur Le Pont, d'Avignon' learnt in French class at school? Mind you it's all a bit topsy turvy as the bridge is actually Pont St. Bénézet and the dance happened under the bridge and not over the bridge as it crossed a river island with pleasure grounds where there was frequent dancing. Not just that, but today there isn't much left, as every time the Rhone flooded, the bridge weakened and had to be rebuilt and by the C17 they gave up and just four arches remain. The other thing about Avignon is that in the C14, seven successive French popes, beginning with Clement V chose to live in Avignon rather than Rome due to conflict between the Papacy and the French crown. The plan was to visit for the day and explore, but having taken ages to actually locate the huge car park, all 1400 spaces appeared to be taken! We drove out of town, catching a glance at that Pont!


 
Entering Avignon we had seen a sign for the Carrieres de Lumieries at Baux-de-Provence called Marc Chagall - Midsummer Nights' Dreams and decided to reschedule. The only time I have been to Provence before was for a walking week in 2008 and a visit to the lightshow held at these old bauxite quarries was included, with the theme of Van Gogh. I had never seen anything like it and was spellbound so we had to go! Chagall is a bit in the moment for us, having just seen a play at the Globe called the Flying Lovers of Vitebsk. My photos are below, but don't really give an impression of the wonder of the experience with the images duplicated and moving over several walls at the same time, accompanied by music in a space with great acoustics. The show runs on a loop and we watched it through a couple of times from different vantage points lasting an hour or so ... a fabulous end to our time in Provence.

 
 
 
 
 


We made our way to Marseille airport, to the Golden Tulip where we are staying the night before our flight tomorrow morning. We still have our bottle of Gigondas which we are enjoying as we really shouldn't take a chance with it in a suitcase! A bit of dinner later and our trip is at an end.

We've had a great time in Provence. The Gorges du Verdon, Mont Ventoux and The Dentelles of Montmirail all provided the stunning hard landscaping of our trip. Add to that the pretty villages and there seemed to be two sorts ... either pretty with shops and restaurants and lots of tourists like Moustiers, Sault and Rousillion or pretty and deserted with a view of which there were lots but we liked like Banon and Simiane best.

Finally we mustn't forget the lavender, and we obviously timed it just right to see plenty. Getting a fabulous photo was harder than I thought as sometimes we arrived at a good vantage point at the wrong time of day, or the lavender was not quite at peak purple! But we enjoyed the adventure and the smell was amazing ... shame this isn't a scratch and sniff blog!

Thanks for coming along and hope you enjoyed the trip.

À bientôt!