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Published: June 24th 2008
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Avignon is a really great example of a Medieval city. The first one I feel I’ve seen, with its great wall-driven planning and architecture. And the color of the place is so refreshingly uniform it’s amazing. I probably wouldn’t say that normally, but after spending a month in the Life/Monopoly/Risk color schemes of the rest of Europe it’s actually quite nice, if just for a change.
Even from a distance, Avignon looks like a convincing storybook castle. And as the town takes shape, the character of the walls in complimentary contrast to the fortified buildings inside makes you feel like whispering “Camelot” in an awed voice and then complaining that it’s only a model. But it isn’t, so that would be silly. No, Avignon is real, and is really nice.
We started the day by visiting Avignon’s unfinished bridge, which is apparently famous worldwide since there’s a song that mentions it, but I have no idea what song this is nor have I ever heard it before so I’ll have to trust Mom (who mentioned the song in a phone call that morning) on this one. As well as the million T-Shirts that said “The city, the bridge, the
song: Avignon”. The bridge is sort of silly, as it’s literally just a halfbridge with an empty cathedral in the middle, but it does afford an interesting view of the city. Plus the story is interesting—apparently they tried to complete the bridge 9 times, and after repeated failures due to fire, flood, and money trouble, they just plumb gave up. Oh well, it’s probably more valuable to the city as a tourist attraction anyways. They probably planned that from the start. Yay forward thinking.
We continued into the city itself, literally through the wall by a primitive man-sized cut hole. Charming! We followed the city wall, dodging cars that didn’t really fit in the medieval streets to the Palace that held the French Popes for their entire reign. If you don’t know anything about Avignon history and the French Popes, Wikipedia will do a better job explaining than I can, but it’s really necessary to appreciate Avignon fully. The palace itself is pretty much complete, but is also completely washed of all the brilliant color that it must have had in its heyday (Knowing how they do in the Vatican) from paint, tiles, drapes and the like. Guess the
placed was pretty ravaged by fire, pillaging, invasion and the wonderfully history-destroying French Revolution. I can appreciate their desire to keep things as much in their original form as possible, but I for one would have appreciated at least one room to be restored to its original appearance, if just for comparison. Either way though, the castle was great and I learned a lot of interesting history though the excellent displays and audiotour there (one of the only good audiotours I’ve had here). And it also afforded some great views of the city and surrounding area which I always appreciate.
We decided to wander the town a bit more since we had a good deal of time before we felt we had to continue on to Carcassonne. So we followed a loosely foodward path through the town appreciating the medieval walled-in streets and buildings. It’s here that we found one of the creepiest things I have ever seen in my entire life. There was a golden statue of a modern man in the middle of a very secluded empty square surrounded by high building walls on every side. The statue, upon closer curious observation (a modern man bronzed in
this city? “Why?” I wondered) was dripping a small amount of water, like a puny fountain. Even closer inspection reveals that the man is, in fact, crying. Water flowed steadily in small amounts from his left eye. This is even more freaky as the man is also smiling, open-mouthed and quite broadly. So maybe he’s laughing? But wait a minute, all this close concentration has placed a quiet around me in which I think, yes, I do hear laughter! Or… crying? Some additional inspection reveals that there is a speaker imbedded in the base of the statue with a very VERY faint audio track of somewhat insane sounding crying/laughter. I have no idea what that story behind this statue is, but I must say I do highly approve of the slow steady path of discovery through increasing concentration that it afforded Brent and I. very creepy, and very well-done. Hopefully the video that only a select few of you will probably eventually see gets the experience across well enough.
We then ate some Italian food in France that was delicious but included a hidden 8 dollar few for a jug of what we thought was free tap water that
we were never told about until wonderful ol’ bill time. It was still good though. A transfer to the high-speed railway station, a visit to a pay WC (civilization at work, friends) and few hours wait due to more brilliant French train strikes and we were on our way to Carcassonne. It’s not half of a half of a tenth as simple as that (ohhh no), but I’ll save that story for the next entry. Good night!
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