Our first stop was Avignon. It has a lot history due to being the site of the palpacy from 1309- 1423 entire city is surrounded by a wall. It was quite amazing and beautiful. The main attraction is the papal palace that built and expanded by various popes before the pope returned near Rome. At one point there were actually two popes, one in France and the other in Italy. Do an internet search for more info on the history as it is quite extensive.
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| Walking through the center square of town. About 12,000 people live inside the walled city |
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| City Hall |
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| Papal Palace
Of course, we had to find a playground. This one was at the top of the hill by the palace.
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| View from the top of the hill- "outside the walled city" |
Once we were inside the palace, it was strange but a flower show was happening and the courtyard was full of roses.
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| Inside the courtyard- we could not taken pictures of the inside of the palace. |
In addition to seeking out every playground in Europe, the kids also have a 6th sense for finding carousels as well, so after a lot of begging and pleading we relented.
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| The homes here are built right into the rock! |
We took the kids to a fancy dinner. The food was wonderful, but the dinner was a bit stressful. As we walk into the restaurant I notice that inside there is a TV and they are showing bull fighting. As many of you know, Ava became a vegetarian when she was four after watching a documentary on migrating birds and there was a hunting scene. She was so upset that she has not touched meat since. I knew she would absolutely lose it if she saw what was going on. So most of the dinner was making sure she did not turn around.
That night we stayed in a motel out in suburbs. I know when you think of Provence you picture nothing but fields of lavendar right? Well, it was beautiful, but there was also a large number of strip malls and housing tracks! Our little motel was on one of those strips. The room as fine, but despite our room being non smoking the floor was not and I spent the night coughing and sneezing until dawn. My allergies have been in full force and this did not help. I was a mess the next day.
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| This picture really doesn't capture the strip mall feel. But if the sign wasn't french this could be a town in Southern California right??
We decided to drive to another medieval village built into the rocks (do you feel a theme coming here?). It was called Les Baux. It was beautiful, but Wes and I have determined that gift shops are going to be our down fall. They send our kids in into a frenzy and I would like to go to just one place that was not plagued with them.
            
After the village- Johnny had one request that we go to a mysterious cave. The motel we stayed at had a bunch of handout of different tourist spots and of course Johnny found the cave- that happened to be two hours out of our way but they we so excited we had to go. Some of the scenery on the way there
Lots of olive orchards on the drive
      
Unfortunately Wes and I did not anticipate traffic on the way back to Lyon. What should have been an hour and half drive- dragged out to almost four hours! We have a great time on these trips but the drive back is always torture and we tend to forgot the fun and question our lives as we drive home. This last picture says it all
Yea, he was not happy and ready to be out of the car-unfortunately we still had about two hours to go!
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