Day off

Wednesday 27 February 2008

Well, I had a great day in Avignon yesterday, wandering the streets and visiting the Papal Palace. The palace is amazing. Most of the rooms are quite empty: stone walls, high ceilings and mullioned windows, with occasional traces of the frescoes and polychromy which once rendered the rooms garish and hideous. Unfortunately, they don’t let you take photos inside, but I did sneak one from the topmost tower.

A view from above of brick arched bridge going partway across a river, with trees on the far bank.

I can’t imagine what it would be like for a devout Christian to visit a place like this. The building is huge and beautiful, but room after room reveals the popes to be grandiose monsters, and medieval Christianity to be a brutal confidence trick. Does that sound harsh? Anyway, at least we got some lovely buildings out of it.

It’s my last full day in Avignon. Off to Nîmes tomorrow, for some Roman ruins. So doing nothing much today. I might walk over to Villeneuve-lez-Avignon on the other side of the river. I might go to Place les Halles, where there’s lots of great food at lunchtime. I might see if I can find that restaurant Geoff mentioned in his comment on my last post. But there’s no list of things to do or sites to see. Just gonna enjoy the atmosphere, I think.