Les vacances en ville

After two days of non-stop tourism in Barcelona, we were ready for a few days of real vacation. All throughout our long train ride across northern Spain and southern France, we were looking forward to arriving in Avignon, the city where I studied abroad two years ago. We knew it would be a relief to be in a place where we could take things at a slower pace and where at least one of us spoke the language.

The building our apartment's in

When our train finally arrived in the city around 3pm, we were greeted by Monsieur Delalondre, whose apartment we are renting for the week. He walked us to the place and showed us around, and we were quite pleased with the set-up. It's pretty small, but still bigger (and a lot less expensive) than a hotel room. And we have a small kitchen to boot!


After we finished checking in with him, we hit the city for a quick tour of all the important places: the main street, the Palais des Papes, the market at Les Halles, etc. Since we had hardly eaten all day, it was the perfect moment to enjoy a doner salade avec frites (basically a gyro with fries and a tahini sauce) from my favorite kebab stand. We continued our walk, then ended up back at the apartment for a nap--we got up at 6am for our train, after all.

Ginette & Marcel, the bistro where we had dinner

Walking around the city later in the evening, we realized we weren't exactly hungry for a full meal but definitely needed something to eat. We stumbled into a quaint little place on the Place de Corps-Saint, close to the apartment, and ordered some tartines, which are basically made up of a large piece of toasted bread with various toppings. John's was a kind of chicken salad with cucumber and corn, and mine was melted brie, honey and walnuts. Delicious.

Lunch!

Today, we finally got to sleep in.
That's when this started to feel like a real vacation. And, since it's Sunday, there's not much going on around town. We made it to the Les Halles market before it closed and bought produce, goat cheese, sausage and bread for lunch and dinner. We had fruit, bread with cheese and a tomato salad for lunch, followed by pastries of course (today marks the first time I've ever had a vanilla eclair: surprisingly yummy, despite the fact that it's not chocolate). For dinner tonight, we will saute asparagus, onions and potatoes and cook the Lyons sausage we bought. Then perhaps we will hunt around town for some ice cream--again, most things are closed on Sundays.

Full of our lunch, we decided to take a walk to see more of the town. We walked outside the city walls and up to Rocher des Doms, a large park built partially into a cliff face that abuts the Palais des Papes. From there you have a great view of the entire city and the Rhone river.

Stairs up to Rocher des Doms

We wandered around the city for a few hours, exploring parts of Avignon I never spent any time in as a student. It's fairly difficult to get lost in this city; whenever you hit one of the ancient ramparts, you just turn around and go back in. Eventually you pop out somewhere familiar.

Tomorrow we will spend doing all the obligatory tourist activities here in Avignon: Palais des Papes, Pont St-Benezet (from the song, "Sur le pont d'Avignon"), and the little island, Barthelasse. More importantly, we will continue to try out some local foods. Some of the best sight-seeing in France is in the inside of a little cafe, in my opinion.

I am so happy to be back in this city!