Last Day of Cruise at Avignon

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Our wonderful cruise has come to the last day which of course began with a briefing about disembarkation and further arrangements. This was all rather sad although they assured us that we still had a wonderful day in Avignon ahead followed by the captain’s farewell dinner. We assembled on the shore with our guides. We had read a book which referred to “cheeky French waiter school” and our guide was definitely “cheeky French guide”. He was very affected but knew his stuff, and led us first to the famous Pont d’Avignon, of which only four arches remain, the other 18 having been swept away in a huge flood in 1669. In those days the Rhone was much wider and shallower, but later an island was created in the middle so that the river has two branches which are more easily controlled and more navigable. The island is very popular for camping, cycling and running. On the bridge is the chapel of St Nicholas where the legendary founder of the bridge, Saint Benezet, was buried.

From there we walked through the well preserved mediaeval walls to the Palace of the Popes. This is a huge edifice consisting of the old palace of Benedict XII, which sits on the impregnable rock of Doms, and the new palace of Clement VI, the most extravagant of the Avignon popes. This was the time when there were French popes in Avignon opposed to the Italian popes – there is lots of information on the web about the palace and papal history. The palace was originally extensively decorated by two Italian artists but during the French revolution soldiers were quartered in the palace, and destroyed a lot of the decoration and converted the large rooms into barracks. The rooms have been restored to their original layout, but only a few frescoes remain. These vividly depict the life at the time. The pope had his own suite of rooms and there was also a huge banqueting hall and kitchen with a high chimney reminiscent of those in Turkish palaces.

When we went into the chapel the guide had a surprise for us – he sung an old song in Latin and had a very beautiful voice, amplified by fine acoustics in the room. We were all very impressed.

We returned to the boat for lunch and then explored Avignon some more by ourselves. The mistral was blowing and it was very windy even by our standards, but we walked up the hill from where there are fine views and then we checked out the train station from where we were leaving the next morning – not too far and very easy to find.

The Captain’s dinner in the evening was very enjoyable. we sat with a nice couple from Coventry whom we had joined for several meals, and another English couple whom we had not even met before. It was all very convivial, if a little sad. We then finished our packing as we had to be out of our cabins by 9 o’clock, as they were preparing for the next lot of passengers.

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