Avignon – Palace of the Popes

On Thursday we left Crillon le Brave and headed back to Avignon to spend the night. We had to catch the TGV bullet train about 6 A.M. That meant a pretty early wake up call and we wanted to be close to the train depot.

We arrived Avignon about 1 p.m., got settled in at the Avignon Grand Hotel – a very nice place – heck, they even upgraded us to a suite – “clean living” I suppose. We still had one more day in the country and the Palais des Papes was walking distance away.

Avignon is a very old French city that sits right on the Rhone river. It’s claim to fame it that it housed the Popes for about 100 years from the early 1300’s – so of course, we had to tour the Palais des Papes. This was one very “cool”, and very big palace. All the treasures have since been looted, but it was quite an experience walking the space the popes walked 700 years ago. You look at the size and breath of these medieval structures, and you just marvel at the engineering that must have gone into these building projects.

We settled in for our last meal in France – you won’t believe where – it was O’Neill’s Irish Pub. Please no emails. It was prepared in a French style, very delicious, and heck, it was happy hour too. After that, it was back to the hotel and set the alarms for 3:45 a.m.