Blogs from Avignon, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France, Europe - page 17

Druhý den jsme vyrazili později, a kolem 9h. Jelo se velmi dobře, dobré silnice a malý provoz.... read more

Bonjour! I am posting this from a great little cybercafé in the backstreets of Avignon, in the heart of the Provençale region in the south-east of France. I'm on day three of my eight-day tour of provence, and I'm having a great time! I am traveling around with my friend Toni, a fellow Sciences Po student from Hong Kong, and Avignon was the first stop on our trip. This afternoon we're moving on to Arles, a bit to the south, and then we'll make our way east to Aix-en-Provence (made famous by Cézanne, among others) before finishing in Marseille, a huge port city on the Mediterranean with the second-largest population in France and a reputation for fun-loving, rough-edged but character-filled people and atmosphere. Avignon: City of Popes Avignon is most famous for having been the papal ... read more

Today was mostly a travel day, we took the TGV (train grande vite, ie the fast train) from London to Paris to Avignon. It took most of the day and we ended up in Avignon around 3 pm. It was very interesting trying to get through the Paris train station as we didn't really know what we were doing. In france we noticed that dogs and scooters can go pretty much go everywhere. We saw both dog poop and birds inside of the Paris train station. It was a little unexpected. We had to keep shooing the pigons away from our bags. Once we crossed over to France from England we saw beautiful farms and rolling hills from the train window. I guess it would remind me of northern california a little, perhaps. But nothing can ... read more

August 17-19, 2006 Geography Lesson: Limoux (the town where I am being hosted) is in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France. Basically, the south border of France is broken into three fairly equal regions of which the Languedoc-Roussillon is the center region, bordering a bit of Spain and a bit more of the Mediterranean. The region to the east is Provence and The Cote D’Azur (where you find Avignon, Marseille, Toulon, Saint-Tropez, Cannes, and Nice, and Monaco). Originally, Simone and I had planned to travel much of the French Mediterranean coastline, from Narbonne to Monaco. But, since this is the high-season for beach (la plage) vacations the roads near the ocean are just jam packed, especially the closer you get to Nice. So, instead, we decided to focus on Avignon (northeast of Limoux, and still in Provence ... read more

Another place, another festival. Europe in summer is absolutely choccas with festivals and i seem to catch alot of them by pure accident! The festival in Avignon was more cultural than party party but it was nice to have a bit of a break. The main focus was a massive film festival. Lauren and I went and saw an american movie directed by John Tuturro, called Romance and Cigarettes. It was very interesting, kinda weird as these film festival movies usually are but surprisingly a bit of a tear jerker. The best bit was that it only cost 2 euros! Other than that we visited the Palais de Papes, the Palace of the Popes where a bunch of popes lived for a while, when the political climate in Rome was a bit much for them. Other ... read more