Avignon

Today we drove to Avignon. It was a nice drive.

Avignon is a lovely city. Old, too.

The theatre festival was on. Lots of theatre troups were advertising their shows on the streets which was fun.

Unfortunately they also covered the whole inner city with their bloody posters...

(Image from Wikipedia)
One of the things I wanted to see myself, was the Palais des Papes. Several popes lived here for a while after one of them decided to move out of Rome because it got a bit too violent there.

It's HUGE.

(Image from Wikipedia)
I forgot to make this photo myself so I am borrowing this from the Wikipedia site.  This is the main entrance. It gives a bit of perspective on its size. Now look at the previous picture again.

The castle looks very impressive from the outside. It's a beautyful building.

It's kept incredibly tidy. Everything is manucured. Almost down to a sterile level. Once that gets to you, you start to realise that you're not gonna be able to get in touch with history, if you know what I mean?

Beatiful little views, great for making pictures. But all the rooms were empty and crispy clean.

It's big. Very big.

We were there! :-)

One thing I always love about castles are the window seats carved out of stone. It's one of the very few places where you can somehow imagine being one of the inhabitants and how the people living here in those days could've felt.

Look, a pope!

All in all we were all a bit dissapointed because of the emptiness of the castle but oh well...

(More on the bridge at its Wikipedia page)
Next stop was the Pont de Avignon, also know as "Pont Saint-Bénézet". I was very curious to find out what the deal is with this bridge that ends halfway in the water!

There is a little chapel on the first pillar in the water. This was build for the founder of the bridge who was made a Saint for dubious reasons in those days...

The chapel.

You can walk on the part of the bridge that is still there.

So why is the bridge not complete? This is what happened:
It was build between 1177 and 1185. Fourty years later it was destroyed during the Albigensian Crusade (you can look that up yourself if you wish ;-) ). The bridge was rebuild but too costly to maintain because arches kept collapsing when the river flooded. It wasn't really strong, at some point the bridge was barely wide enough to let 2 adults pass eachother on foot! Some parts were also rebuild with wood instead of stone. So in the middle of the 17th century the bridge was abandoned and left to what it is today.

Avignon is surrounded by a big city wall. This was one of the gateways in.

OK. Back at the ranch I checked tomorrow's weather forecast. Could be worse don't you think? :-)