Yes, today was a revisit to Avignon, but we did not dance on the famous bridge. In fact we didn't go near it. Our motivation for today's visit was to finally take the tour of the Palais des Papes, which was the home for the Catholic church for around one hundred years beginning in the 1300's.
Our first delight was to receive the"old fart" price. We didn't ask for it. The gentleman selling tickets suggested it. Should we be insulted? C'est la vie!
Of course, as well as being a papal palace, this was also a fortified castle and it definitely has one of the most imposing facades. If I were the enemy, I'd just turn around and go away. This place looks totally impregnable.
The interior is pretty bleak, mainly because the palace had a major fire in the 1400's, so most ornamentation from the papal era was lost.
We had an audio tour, but you know, after about one minute I quickly switched it off because it was giving way too much information that was, quite frankly, totally redundant to just enjoying a nice walk. Don't get me wrong. We love the history, just not in too much detail.
We had lunch today at one of the many roadside cafes just below the palace. This place called La Lutrin captured Dawn's fancy, because it was on a corner just below the palace on a major walking avenue. We both had entrecote and although we generally complain about French beef, this was pretty enjoyable. As you can see from the picture, we also had a regular lunch companion.
No trip to Avignon would be complete without a visit to Auchan. We went today mainly to check out their Wine Fair - Foire des Vins. Of course a wine fair at a French supermarket means French wines only. That's OK, because that's what we were looking for anyway. I just about snapped up a case of St. Emilion about which Robert Parker raved, but I settled on a case of a gold-medal winning St. Chinian from Roquebrun.
As we get off the autoroute at Orange Sud, we noticed this year, an addition to their traffic circle - an older French jet. I suppose this is in tribute to the Air Force base here. We are regularly "zoomed" by the "boys" - perhaps girls too - from the base.
Immediately at the traffic circle is a Palace of Wine that features 600 Rhone wines. We have never visited and today I'm glad we did. Because we've been consuming less red wine due to the heat, we've been testing a lot of white local product and like I said in an earlier blog, the only locals we've found have been a bit pricy and actually aren't quite up to our expectations. At the Palais du Vin, we had a fellow who spoke good English and really knew his wines. When we said we liked California whites, he pulled out three for us to try. Low and behold, one from a domaine in Visan we both found totally enjoyable. It was actually labelled as a St. Maurice. It won out over a white Chateauneuf du Pape by the way.
Back at the ranch it was another light meal tonight, inside, because the Mistral continues to prevail.
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