Mini-vacation to the south: Avignon, Nîmes, Montpellier

Kerstin and I had the good fortune of getting a week off of work, since it was the "semaine banalisée" at Jeanne d'Arc and therefore all of the poor students were taking their "Bac blanc", or mock final exams, for an entire week. Which meant no classes, ie no work for us! So we decided to take advantage of this unexpected free time to explore a bit of the country and escape the the cold of Nancy and head...south!

Our vacation started out a bit rocky, as Kerstin unfortunately got the train time wrong and we missed the first train to Avignon on Sat. the 22, which was supposed to leave at 6:51 (she misread it as 6:57...we got there exactly as our train was pulling away.) It wasn't a big deal though, since trains run frequently and we hopped on the next one 2 hours later. After 5 hours of passing the beautiful French countryside all the way down to the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, we arrived in Avignon.

Stop #1: "sur le pont d'Avignon"
We arrived in the afternoon to full sunlight, a beautiful day to start off our trip! We took a shuttle to the centre of the city and were immediately met with gale-force winds. "Avignon", as we learned, takes its name from the Latin for "fierce winds". It held true to its name, as we were blown about over the next day and a half. Our ears ached from the gusts rushing past and although it was bright and sunny and only about 3-4 degrees, the wind made it feel that much colder. I wish I had brought a hat and windbreaker! Nevertheless, we explored the whole interior of the downtown, which is fortified all the way around by ramparts.

the ramparts fortifying the city

downtown Avignon

nothing but sun!

The city is fairly compact and easy to get around, so we explored the downtown and walked up the steps to the Cathedral (which was closed for construction) but gave a nice view over the city, and we headed up into the park behind the cathedral, which had beautiful trees, flowers, ponds and rock steps you could climb up for a lovely view over the river.

We had already had enough of the cold wind and we headed into a local café for lunch and to warm up. Our time rather limited, we decided to visit the Palais des Papes, Avignon's main attraction, until it closed at 6 (everything closes early in the off season) and save the Pont d'Avignon for the next day. We had a great tour inside the Palais, with audioguides with lots of detailed information about the Palace, its construction, and papal history. Now a UNESCO Heritage Site, it was built in the 14th century and was residence to 7 popes during the Avignon Papacy from 1309-1377 (that's right, the Vatican can't take all the credit!), and belonged to the Papacy until the French Revolution. The Palace is huge, with many towers, treasuries, lavish chambers and grant halls, kitchens and chapels. Definitely a very interesting and worthwhile visit!

Palais des Papes

The Courtyard of Honour

The Great Chapel

After our tour, we grabbed some food and wine from a grocery store and a galette des rois from a bakery and headed to our couchsurfing hosts place where we would be staying the night. Our hosts, Cédric and Amandine, a couple who are 12 years apart, were extremely nice and welcoming and had even invited us to dinner (I told them we were vegetarians but were happy to bring food for ourselves and just eat with them). They also had a bulldog, who was ugly as sin and was a complete mushy baby that wanted to be pet and loved 24/7. Everyone knows how much I love dogs, so you can imagine how thrilled I was when the damn beast kept trying to climb on my lap for snuggles and lick my face...I was even more enamored when it puked right in front of me on the nice couch. It took me forever to get the white, wiry dog hairs off of all my clothes. There was fur EVERYWHERE. Anyways, we had a really nice evening chatting and getting to know our hosts, talking about travel and such, and they were quite happy we had brought the galette for dessert, as a little "thank you" for letting us stay! Their apartment was small but very nice and we were grateful to have a room and bed to ourselves for the night. We thanked them for their hospitality in the morning and headed out to explore the rest of the city.

We went immediately to the famous Pont Saint-Bénézet (Saint-Benezet Bridge), also known as the Pont d'Avignon which is a medieval bridge built in the 12th century. The bridge stops in the middle of the Rhône river, as it suffered a lot of damage due to flooding over the centuries and most of the arches collapsed. It was originally 900m long with 22 arches, and now only 4 remain.  The bridge's construction was inspired by Saint Bénézet, a local shepherd boy who (according to tradition) was commanded by angels to build a bridge across the river. Although he was ridiculed at first, he dramatically "proved" his divine inspiration by miraculously lifting a huge block of stone. He won support for his project from wealthy sponsors who formed themselves into a Bridge Brotherhood to fund its construction. After his death, he was interred on the bridge itself, in a small chapel standing on one of the bridge's surviving piers on the Avignon side. (thanks Wikipedia!)

Pont Saint-Benezet/Pont d'Avignon

 

We had to pay to get onto the bridge and were given audioguides that explained the construction, historical importance and ultimate destruction of the bridge. We hurried through the "tour" since, again, it was very windy, and even more so on a fully exposed bridge in the middle of the river. 

The bridge is made even more famous by the children's song "Sur le Pont d'Avignon" (on the Avignon Bridge), which goes something like this:

Sur le pont d'Avignon

L'on y danse, l'on y danse

Sur le pont d'Avignon

L'on y danse tous en rond

(On the Avignon bridge

We dance, we dance

On the Avignon bridge

We all dance there in a round)

me, sur le pont d'Avignon! (I didn't dance though)

There are of course many verses, and I had the damn song stuck in my head for the whole days after it was played on the audioguide. After another walk around the city, we grabbed lunch inside to warm up before heading out on the train to...

Stop #2: Nîmes

We had never actually planned on going to Nîmes, but under the insistence of our couchsurfing hosts in Avignon we decided to make a brief pit-stop on the way to Montpellier. It was a Sunday, (which meant that while everything else was closed, all things of cultural and national heritage were required to stay open) and with 4 hours to spare we headed directly for the Arènes, or Roman Amphitheatre, the most well-preserved in Europe. 

this Roman Amphitheatre deserves a jump shot!

my badly stitched panorama of the arena

We had a fantastic audio-tour guide of the amphitheatre, which was built around 1-2c AD, and we learned all about the history of gladiator fighting and more recently bull fighting. Very cool!

We then headed to the Jardins de la Fontaine (Fountain Gardens) built around Roman thermae ruins.

Unfortunately we didn't have time to sit and enjoy the gardens, as we only had 2 hours before our last 2 points of interest closed. Namely, the Tour Magne (great tower), a roman tower that stands on Mont Cavalier overlooking the city (we had a nice little hike through forest and gardens to get up to it!)

Tour Magne

We climbed to the top of the tower, only a couple hundred steps, for a spectacular view of Nîmes.

I'm getting better at stitching panoramic shots...improvements to be made though

roomies atop the tower!

 Climbing back down, we headed to our last point of interest, the Maison Carrée (Square House), a small Roman temple built around 19 BCE and is one of the best preserved in Europe. Inside there's a small movie theatre where you watch a short film about the history of Nîmes (in 3D!). It was kind of cheesy but interesting nonetheless. 

look closely...even closer...yep, 3rd pillar to the left, there's me!

We had a hell of a time trying to find food since everything was closed (damn Sundays in this country!) but at least we were able to warm up in a café before hopping on our evening train to our final destination...

Stop #3: Montpellier (and the beach)

We reached Montpellier in the evening, and our couchsurfing host for the night, a very nice young student named Justine, picked us up at the train station and took us by tram to her basement apartment not far from the downtown. It was small but cosy and she had her sister staying with her and a number of friends over visiting (which happens often since she lives alone), so we had a nice time chatting and getting to know everyone. We even all went out for dinner (sushi!), which was very classy and delicious except some of the girls wanted McDonald's as well, so there Kerstin and I sat eating our cute little box of vegetarian sushi, surrounded by six 18-year old girls and boxes of Big Macs. All class.

 

 

mmm sushi...

It was an interesting dynamic, being among the company of 1st year university students, and funny to see how much I've matured since then (I think so, anyways! Maybe not fully completely...). But all of the girls were very nice and we had fun talking and laughing, and they didn't think it anything out of the ordinary to be spending time with 2 complete strangers from other countries!

After dinner we passed through the large and grandiose main square, Place de la Comédie, all nicely lit-up, and headed to a kitchy Irish bar called Charlie's for a drink.

We headed back to the apartment around midnight, and sleeping arrangements were quite interesting since Justine had 1 futon and a roll out mattress...and there were 5 of us sleeping there! (Her sister and sister's boyfriend were supposed to have left that morning but missed their train). Justine was very kind and insisted Kerstin and I have the bed while she made a makeshift bed out of various blankets and covers on the floor for herself and the other 2. How sweet!

We made it out in good time the next morning to take advantage of our day, and said goodbye and sincerely thanked her for her hospitality. (So far, 6 successful and very positive couchsurfing experiences under my belt...woot!) Kerstin and I headed downtown to the tourist office to grab maps and info and set off for a day of walking. We marched all over the city under a sunny, cloudless sky and about 9-10 degree weather, perfect! We wandered mostly around the historic old city, and stopped at the main sites such as St. Pierre's Cathedrale, the Porte de Payrou, St. Clément Aqueduct and tour de Babote.

Place de la Comédie

l'opéra

Aqueduc de St. Clément

Cathedrale de Saint Pierre

Tour de la Babote

Porte du Peyrou

We even "followed" part of the route of Saint Jacques de Compostelle, marked by little brass "shells" in the cobblestone:

on the route of Saint Jacques de Compostelle!

After a few hours of walking, we decided it was beach time! We hopped on the tram and then a bus that would take us to the closest beach site, in a small town about a half hour away. We got off the bus at the last stop (there was only us and an old lady left on it), which seemed to drop us off, literally, in the middle of nowhere. We were in the middle of a highway in some small town, and we double checked the bus map at the stop to make sure we were heading the right direction. We passed by canals, small lakes and marinas, which gave us a good clue that we were indeed on the right path. After about 15 minutes of walking, we saw it: BEACH ==>. Finally, some sort of sign! And there it was, the Mediterranean stretched out in front of us, blue glistening water and white sand calling our names. It was beautiful and sunny and (relatively) warm, and even better, the beach was deserted save for us and a couple people walking their dogs. We could only imagine the crowds during the summer! We collected shells, dipped our hands in the water, breathed in the fresh sea air and sat for awhile to just relax and enjoy. Perfect.

we made it!

that's right, this is winter in the south of France!

failed jump shot (we gave up after 3 tries...it's hard with auto timer!)

panoramic stitch = fail

Our day coming to a close, we were a little sad to leave but glad we ended our trip on such a peaceful, relaxing note! We made it back to the bus stop just as the bus was arriving, and had time to enjoy a crêpe and coffee in the city before catching our afternoon train back to Nancy, a long 8 hour ride.

T'was a short and sweet vacation (emphasis on the latter) but was a nice break to get out of Nancy for a bit anyways!