The following day, we set off for Beaucaire, a small river port town off of the Rhone, where we rented a small apartment for the five us to stay in. It was a pretty centralized location for all of the towns that we wanted to see. It was about a 3 hour drive from Lyon, which is very long when squished in the back seat of a car with two other people.
On the way there we stopped at the Pont du Gard right outside of a town called Orange. The Pont du Gard is a Roman aqueduct that still stands over the Gard River. Because Rick Steve's lied to us about how much it cost to park, we parked off on a side road and hiked over to it. It was a lovely walk full of olive groves and older broken down parts of the aqueduct.
When we finally got up the aqueduct, it was much more gigantic and amazing than I was expecting. I might even call this my favorite thing that we saw on the whole trip (maybe).
One of the cool things about this was that it actually formed a bridge over the river and they let you walk on it (which doesn't usually happen with ancient structures).
Here are the views from each side of the aqueduct, it's funny how they almost seem like two completely different places:
On the other side, we got a woman to take a group picture.
After that, we crossed back over the bridge. My grandpa wanted to go around to the other side of the Pont du Gard because the sun was shining on that side, so he and I did that while the others went to get the car (the pictures look different because they're from different cameras)
Also while we were over there, there were some people canoeing underneath it which I thought would have been completely awesome!
After that, we headed to Beaucaire and got settled into the apartment there:
Before wasting too much time there, we headed out to see Avignon, a walled city. The picture on the right is me and my dad standing into the entrance to the wall. For those of you that are not history or french people, there are two major attractions in Avignon, the Palais des Papes (the Palace of the Popes) and the Pont d'Avignon (a bridge).
The Papacy was moved to Avignon in 1305 because of the danger of armed disagreements between Roman nobles. In 1378 due to rising tensions between France and the Holy Roman Empire, Gregory XI moved the Papacy back to Rome. His predecessor, an Italian, then deliberately alienated France. After his election, the french cardinals formed their own conclave and elected anti-popes, who lived in Avignon. This schism ended in 1417 with the Council of Constance.
The palais des papes was interesting. It was very large, very cold, and very stoney.
The inside was too dark to take pictures of, but here are some pictures of us in the courtyard.
They gave you these gigantic cellphone-like thing that told you about every room in your own language; it was interesting but got kind of long before too long.
After the pope's palace, my grandparents took a break for a glass of wine and my parents and I headed to the Pont d'Avignon. I was excited to see it because there is a well-known french children's song about it that we'd learned in French class. The bridge only goes halfway across one side of the fork of the Rhone River because much of it was destroyed by flooding.
Here again they gave us the giant cellphone-like things to tell us about what we were seeing:
They had stairs that took you down onto a platform closer to the river, here are my parents on the platform:
The story of the Pont d'Avignon is actually really interesting. It's also called the Pont Saint Bénezet for the shepherd boy who was told by angels to build it. He was apparently ridiculed at first. To prove that it was a message of God, Bénezet was asked to lift an impossibly heavy rock into place to start the foundation for the bridge. When he succeeded, it was considered a miracle and the bridge was built.
Here is the view of the palais des papes from the bridge:
That night, my dad had made reservations for us at a French cuisine restaurant (probably more french than any of us had eaten at thus far on the trip). It was called Au Tout Petit and I suppose if you like French food (which I don't particularly), it would have been very good. As for me I got the vegetarian dish which turned out to be a whole lot of mushrooms. :-/
It was funny because at every restaurant that we went to, my family asked for a suggestion of a dry red wine. Now I don't know anything about wines, but this always seemed to perplex the restaurant people. They kept saying that red wines weren't really dry. It just amused me because no matter how many times they'd been told that, they kept asking for dry red wines. :-)
For dessert, I got an apricot ice cream dish. It was really bad, but my mom and grandma's chocolate caramel lava cake was really good (minus the caramel)
Overall, it was an awesome day! We got to see a lot of stuff that I'd been looking for.
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