We had an uneventful drive from St. Tropez to Villeneuve lez Avignon yesterday. I'm really starting to enjoy these French motorways. Open, easy and with great scenery, even the tolls can't make me speak ill of them. Likewise with the little Peugot. I think I'm becoming a little emotionally attached. It's comfortable and reliable with enough room for passengers and luggage. And we've now driven Geneva-Genoa-Monaco-Nice-St.Tropez-Avignon on just over one tank of diesel. Got to love that.
Avignon was going to signal a shift in our vacation from beaches and pool-side deck chairs back to traipsing through museums and historical buildings. This part of Provence definitely has plenty of those. We were a little worried that maybe we had gone a little soft over the past week and that our feet would rebel against being put in some sensible shoes and forced to act as our major mode of transport again. It got worse as we approached Avignon and the GPS told us to keep going. We crossed bridges over the Rhone and started climbing a little into the hills on the opposite bank. We eventually stopped our hotel, thoroughly dejected at how far away we were from our targeted attractions.
We were slightly cheered by the beautiful garden of the hotel and the amenities of the room. Seeing as it was well into the afternoon and Avignon proper was too far away, we decided to wander into town and see what it had to offer.
The first thing we noticed is that Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, which, as the name suggests, is the "new" town of Avignon - the suburb that people decided to build when Avignon itself got too smelly - yet it has plenty of stuff over 500 years old. I love that European historical perspective, that the new town has been around for half a millennium.
Second, it is probably the best smelling town we have ever been in. It is awash in blooming lilacs and wysteria, and the fragrance was being kept at ground level by the threat of an approaching rain storm. We would walk a hundred paces and then literally stop and smell the, well, not roses, but flowers nonetheless.
We had a couple of easy targets to head for. The first was the Tour Philippe le Bel, an imposing structure on the edge of town with spectacular views. Unconvinced that we wanted to trudge up a couple of hundred steps, we headed for option 2: Fort Saint Andre. It sits up on a rock ledge on the other town, but instead of stairs it could be accessed via gently sloping streets weaving through small streets with little flower boxes sharing space on the stoop with lazy dogs.
As we got closer to the fort the views of Avignon across the river got better and better. Then we got to the fort and forgot about that stuff for a while. Ten times better than the Citadel we toured in St. Tropez the fort was a great way to spend an hour. You could tour the battlements and chapels and scale the guard towers. Centuries old graffiti covered most walls. The tower tops showed exactly why the fort was built, as you looked out over the Rhone and the entirety of the surrounding valley.
As an added bonus we were able to duck into a priory that is entirely encompassed within the fort. While there were some interesting historical elements there as well (it recently celebrated the 1000th anniversary of it's first restoration!) the real reason for going was the large, sprawling garden. There were ponds and statuary, wysteria on trellises, an olive grove, paths lined with irises. It was Eden-like. We could have stayed for many more hours than we did. We're filing this place away in our memories as somewhere we need to return to at a different time of year, perhaps when the rose garden is in full bloom.
We've been saying that about a lot of things in Provence and Cote d'Azur. I think we picked a decent time of year to come. Things are open, but not overly busy. The weather is good. The hotel prices are not at their peak. On the down side, no prime beach weather, extra attractions are unavailable and no lavender fields in bloom.
We had dinner at the gourmet restaurant in the hotel. Good lamb chops and filet. Interesting experience with the cheese cart, though. The man rolled up, proceeded to tell us this part of his cart was goat cheese, this part was cow's milk and then started with a rapid fire recitation of the names of all 25 cheeses. I think we showed our ignorance with our inspired choices of "umm, this one" and "a small piece of that one". Note to self: study up on cheeses.
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