Sur le Pont d'Avignon...

Pope's Palace in Avignon

Old towns in Germany and in France! There is a difference. In Germany every historic place is scrupulously clean, freshly renovated, painted by the best paints. Our cities look so beautiful as they just never looked in the past. In France in contrast old cities are even old, have scars, let crumble the plaster partly and the colors are faded a little. So, like in Avignon f.i.

We have Avignon in our plan, of course. As we have visited the pope's palace already, we split up with our relatives which want to see the impressive palace from the 14th century. We want to stroll through the historic city center . Avignon intramuros is the name of the city core surrounded by a complete city wall. We start at the pope's palace. It's early in the day, 10 o' clock is just over when we reach thePlace de l'Horloge an idyllic location with many shady planes, street cafés and hotels. The first children have a ride on a historic carousel. Here the heart of Avignon is beating, we read in our guide. But now we see only waiters setting the tables in the outside sections and lively citizens of Avignon hurrying to their jobs.

The main shopping street in the city center is the Rue de la Republique , where just the shops are opening, water trucks providing the many flower buckets and French drinking their morning café in the bistros.

Café La Régence (StreetView)

After we had our Café créme in Café Regence at the corner of Rue Vernet we continue our stroll until the city wall (rempart). We come to the city gate Porte de la Republique and see the central station outside the wall. But we walk along the wall, and in the Rue St.-Michel we turn left in direction to the inner city consisting of many small lanes and nice squares. The cafés and bistros open here on 11. Everywhere is busy activity. Chairs and tables are set up, table clothes laid on and the parasols put up. The butchers and bakeries invite to come in.

Place Pie with Market Hall

At the Place-Saint-Didier we visit the romanic church with the same name. To the north a small pedestrian zone begins here. But most of the streets and roads are used by many cars, vans and even buses traveled.

The traffic chaos is at the Place Pie at the most, because here the road renewed. The interesting thing about this place is the covered market Les Halles, but which has unfortunately closed today (Monday). It is a modern building with a green exterior.

Behind the Pope's Palace

At the Place des Carmen with an impressive church, we are slowly on the way back towards the Papal Palace. In the meantime, we also achieved a call of my brother in law, who reports that they have left the Pope's Palace again. On a long staircase, the Escaliers-Sainte-Anne, we reach the Jardin de Rocher des Doms, a beautiful park on the rock, which stretches to the Rhone. We have here a beautiful view of the wide river and the island Bathelasse. Also the second arm located behind the Rhone -Villeneuf lés-Avignon- is good to see.
But now it also turns up, one of the attractions of Avignon: the famous Saint Bénezet bridge built in 14th- century. Actually, it is only a half bridge, the rest had a flood collapsed at 1668. She had originally by 24 arches. Today there are only four ones.

Pont Saint-Bénezet

In the square in front of the palace, we meet our relatives. It is lunch time and we have still planned another objective here in the neighborhood: the Pont du Gard.