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Published: January 5th 2010
The 19th started off with a late exit from the truck stop, eating a €5 breakfast of croissants, jam and coffee, and charging and blogging, before moving into Avignon. The day was doomed however, as I was feeling right grumpy and out of whack, suffering from a crap night's sleep and being generally frustrated at everything on the planet. I think that travelling for months on end catches up to you every now and then, and the 19th was the day of days for it. I was over Avignon after 10 minutes of being in there, it was blowing a Northern alpine wind that was going right through both of us, and I stormed out of the place, with Aleks trailing behind me worriedly. That night I made myself feel better by having my first truck stop dinner, and what a meal it was. Two cheeseburgers with chips and a half litre set us back a heart-stopping €21.80, but we were too snotty to cook anything, and went to bed early.
Avignon the next morning was a lot more palatable, with blue skies like you've never seen and bugger all wind. The van wasn't even shaking side to side in
The Palais Des Papes
Avignon, Vaucluse, Francethe night! Our first port of call was the Saint Andre Fort on the little island of Villeneuve les Avignon between the Rhone and the Seane rivers. The €8 we paid for the tickets included admission to the fort and also to the Val de Benediction Chartreuse down the road. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The St Andre fort was a fortification built atop the highest part of the isle, and played a very important part in the history of France, as many Kings and Bishops spent time there over the 800 years since it was built, and it served as a meeting and organising place, if you will.
The remains consist of mostly some very well preserved ramparts, a couple of towers housing some ancient relics and beautiful interior architecture, and a few exhibits outlining the history of the place. It was quite beautiful, but slowly deteriorating like many of that sort of thing. The photos over the main city of Avignon from the tower on a clear day were just outstanding, and also provided us our first view of the bottom end of the Alps, which for me was pretty damn exciting. The abbey that
Streetscape
Avignon, Vaucluse, France we visited afterwards (I'm not writing the name again) was also amazing, and was actually a working monastery/abbey/whatever until 1970, and looks very lived-in in some parts. See photos.
That afternoon we parked in the free park and ride across the river had our first real feed in a restaurant, albeit a French/Vietnamese one, inside Avignon City. The food was just great, consisting of some tasty rice beef and prawn paper rolls for entree, a pad thai beef and vermicelli looking thing and chicken and wild chinese mushroom rice thing (aren't I clever), and a bottle of some nice rosé wine to go with it. That set us back €35. Wow! Ain't it exy over here? I'm not kidding, if you're going to eat out, take your platinum credit card and make sure you have one of your kidneys ready to sell. But we were happy, and were looking forward to eating more food in restaurants. After leaving, we saw the Pont d'Avignon bridge from the 13th century, and then jumped in the car and bailed out to (you guessed it) a truck stop near Miramas for the night. We had our first Quick burger for dinner! And boy
was it expensive too - €9 for two tiny burgers. Feck me! This eating out could get to be an expensive exercise.
AW - OK, I'm taking over here as we're up to a part of the trip that I'd been looking forward to most: Provence. For so long, being a bit of a foodie, I'd been hanging to visit this mecca of fresh food and wine, sublime countryside and lavender covered hills.
But it was raining again. Hard.
We stupidly decided to leave Arles for another time, and headed for Aix-en-Provence instead. When we got there, we went to the Tourist Information office where I was after some maps and the girl I was talking to showed me a bunch of stuff that we should have seen in Arles, but it was way out our way by that stage. So we'll leave it for the trip to Italy.
At this stage, the stuff on my leg that we thought might be chilblains was starting to itch more than anything I'd ever experienced and it had also appeared on my other thigh, so it was off to the pharmacy for a remedy. Now, many of you
The City Walls
Avignon, Vaucluse, France would have experienced what I was in for, but for me it was a whole new thing. How do you explain something medical when you totally don't have the vocab to do it? So began a heady game of charades with the pharmacist, which included:
1 - While standing in the shop, I mimed 'very itchy' by scratching my thigh.
2 - I indicate that I should show her the rash, but perhaps not where the whole street can see my knickers.
3 - I head out the back, drop my daks, and am examined by 2 women while telling them that this one appeared then and I scratched it, where as there appeared later and I didn't scratch.
Nonetheless, onward and upward, I got some cream and antihistamines which I applied with vigour. All in all, it was friggin' hilarious to anyone that wasn't me.
After a short walk around Aix-en-Provence, we decided to head off and ended up heading through a town called Manosque, where we decided that it was time to eat some of this infamous regional food. We saw so much to choose from, and I of course forgot my phrasebook, so we
This Is What A $17 Cheeseburger Looks Like
Truckstop Cafe, Near Avignon, Vaucluse, France didn't have a clue what we should choose. But we finally found a restaurant that was doing a 3 course menu du jour for €10.80. And boy did we choose well. The waiter was so sweet and we had no problems understanding him at all. He suggested a local wine, and we were in like flynn.
Our first course was a salad with tons of marinated vegetables on a bed of salad greens, and with a chevre (goats cheese) parcel wrapped in jambon cru (a raw smoked ham). We smiled.
Next came Boeuf Bourgignon, a stewed beef dish done in red wine. We had 2 sides: ratatouille and a potato gratin. And every morsel brought about little squeaks of joy. And the presentation was just lovely.
Lastly, the waiter suggested that we have the Ile de Flotaine for dessert - a light custard with a sweet egg white floating in it, with a little bit of caramel and some fruit. By this point we were ready to explode, but it was just so delicate and not too sweet. Ohhhhh.
Also included in our meal was a coffee (espresso), and then the waiter brought us a digestif
(necessary after how much we'd eaten). It was a white chocolate liqueur, served ice cold, from Italy. This went down just perfectly, and so we stumbled out of the restaurant, unbalanced by the weight of our stomachs. The whole lot - 3 courses, bread, bottle of wine, digestif, coffee: €31. That's about $50 for the folks back home. Can you believe it? And if you think that's good value, take into account that we couldn't eat dinner that night, we were still so full.
At this point we decided that Provence was definitely living up to its foodie reputation.
All we could manage after that was to drive to Maccas (again) to use the net and book some accommodation in Lyon, and then head off to a stop for the night where we read in the van due to even more rain.
Next day we headed off and drove north, which took us through the magnificent (but saturated) countryside. And then folks - the Alps began.
For a couple of kids from Oz, the sight of these snow covered mountains was breathtaking to say the least. We had fog, we had sunshiine and then all of
Vines and Mountains
Near Avignon, Vaucluse, France a sudden we were in the mountains. At gthe time, they looked as though they were swimming in a sea of clouds as all you could see was the peaks. We headed towards Grenoble via Sisteron and stopped off for another quick bite to eat. This time we could do the menu du jour as it would have ended up being messy. So the plat du jour (dish of the day) it was. We were in some mountain village - Monestiere de Clermont - in the middle of nowhere, but we had a really spectacular meal. I had a warm chevre salad to start, and Nemo had a house salad that had bacon and a poached egg on it.
The main course was a pork fillet, with a delicious mustard and white wine sauce, on a bed of stock cooked rice. It was so simple but so divine, and strangely referred to on the menu board as “Filet du Porc Mignon”. No dessert this time, and the meals were more managable in size. All up, with 2 glasses of a divine Beaujolais Nouveau, €23. Loving it.
After food, we headed off and found a place to do some
laundry on the outskirts of Grenoble (contain your excitement) and then went to Carrefour - one of the big supermarkets in France.
Seeing as Xmas was two days away, we'd set ourselves the task of taking a maximum 20 mins in Carrefour where we were to find some presents for each other (and keeping with budget too). As we'd previously promised not to get each other anything, I was perplexed and had no idea what to get the Fish. He however had been planning this for ages and knew exactly what to get. And yet after 20 mins, I arrived at the designated meeting spot with my presents in tow... and no Fish. IN fact it took him over 50 minutes to do his shopping. I was not impressed, but consoled myself with the fact that it was my birthday the next day and was thoroughly looking forward to it. So it was off towards a truck stop - ready for the big day the next day.
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