Lavender Fields Forever

Gloomy fresco at the Palais des Papes, Avignon France

After Nice we set sail for Province, France: the countryside that inspired Monet and many other artists with it's lavender fields that stretch as far as the eye can see. We stopped for lunch in Avignon and went on a self-guided tour of the Palais des Papes, the residence of all Popes from 1309 to 1433 AD. After going through about 5 of the extremely hot and humid, cramped rooms I decided I'd seen enough and headed for the exit.  The only really interesting architectural aspect of the Palais des Papes was a fresco painted on the ceiling of the first room, instead of the popular multi-colored frescoes of Renaissance Italy this one was done entirely in shades of grey and black resulting in a rather gloomy, creepy ambiance. I spent the rest of my time in Avignon shopping for lavender souvenirs which I brought home for all the ladies in my family. I was also pleasantly surprised to stumble upon a dusty train-hopping group of kids playing some honky-tonk tunes for a small crowd. They sang in English and were great, I was pretty content standing there stomping my feet and breathing in the calming smell of Lavender. As a bonus, I bought a beautiful blue polka-dot dress on my way back to the bus.

Pont de Gard, ancient Roman aqueduct bridge

Only a short distance from Avignon we stopped to see the ancient Roman aqueduct bridge named the Pont de Gard.The impressive, three-tiered bridge was part of the 31 mile long Nimes aqueduct used to carry water from a spring at Uzes to the Roman colony of Nimes. Built in the 1st century AD the Pont de Gard is the highest of all aqueduct bridges. It's a popular French tourist destination and below the bridge were dozens of people swimming and floating lazily down the river.

A few more hours down the road we stopped for dinner in the town of Nimes. Here we took a self-guided tour of the huge Nimes Amphitheater which was similar in design to the Colosseum of Rome and is the best preserved Roman amphitheater in France. It probably would have been much more impressive if we hadn't already seen the Colosseum, but one aspect of the Nimes amphitheater that makes it interesting is that concerts and bull fights are still held there today. One guy in our group actually traveled to Nimes from Paris in order to see Blink-182 perform and he said that the acoustics were spot on.

The still used amphitheater in Nimes, France

We wrapped up the day by arriving in our hotel in Province. The area around our hotel was really rural, so Alexa, Justine and I ate dinner at the hotel with our tour director Mark. He brought a bottle of wine that our bus driver's Italian family had made at their Tuscan winery. It was a light red and went deliciously with dinner. We all hit the sack early because the next day we would say goodbye to France once and for all to arrive in Spain!