The last in the series of Avignon in pictures

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Avignon, France, photos, pictures, postaday2012, tourism, travel

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This being the last batch of pictures of a most wonderful city, Avignon, I will say that I think that I saved a few of the best for last. One of my big fascinations is the ever present marche in French towns and cities and the one in Avignon did not disappoint, it wasn’t out in the open as in many other places but its exterior with the living plants making up the entire facade more than intrigued me, I was so impressed by it. I find it very encouraging when communities, even when steeped in centuries of the old ways, still look ahead to th future and incorporate green technologies into the day to day.

I was also taken with the inner city canal and the unique architecture surrounding the area, it felt very different from the rest of the city but still beautiful in its own way. The outer walls were also majestic in their strength and agelessness. You can sense that they have withstood the test of time and of men. It is hard to explain how differently a new country feels after you have spent time in the old country. I am not deliberately trying to be clumsy with my words when I’m trying to share the thoughts and feelings behind my pictures, it’s just that the feelings are hard to translate into words.

The color scheme was something that drew my eye, the deep blue of the sky, the deep green of the water and the various shades of gray in the stone made for an artist’s palette and needed to be captured on what would have been film a decade or more ago and now it’s called pixels. I wonder if people lament the vanishing use of film like people lament vinyl in the c.d age of music.

Beyond my garden, I should take my cell phone in search of good picture opportunities around here. It would be a good contrast to my pictures during my vacation. I will have to keep that in mind for future posts.

Scenes about Avignon, part 3

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Avignon, France, pictures, postaday2012, tourism, travel

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Looking back through this batch of pictures, I can hardly believe that the baby girl and I only spent one night here in Avignon. The only way that I can explain the vast number of pictures taken is that my eye was overwhelmed by the possibilities for interesting and thought provoking shots. The hodge-podge of different influences, different era’s and different building materials makes for a gorgeous canvas that cries out to be painted or taken as pictures, you want to share what you see, it is that amazing.

Reading the history of Avignon after having spent but just two days there, I can understand why Avignon was instantly popular and I mean popular in the sense that Avignon attracted commerce, trade, population growth and success. Its proximity to the mighty Rhone river, its placement between Toulouse, Marseille and Arles, all mighty cities throughout history and its wide open spaces within the city gave the townspeople a sense of well being and quality of life. When the environs surrounding you are well kept and harmonious, it gives you the feeling of bien-être, that is precisely what the baby girl and I felt the entire time. There are certain places that have that effect, you can’t explain it but you feel at home in a place that you barely know. This is what I felt here in Avignon, I hope that these pictures convey how wonderful Avignon is as a place to live and to visit.

Avignon part 2, pictures from within and without

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Avignon, France, Papal Palace, pictures, postaday2012, tourism, travel

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These pictures of Avignon are for the most part centered around the Papal Palace or Le Palais des Papes. The pictures that show Avignon spread out below were taken at the summit of the mount upon where the Palace was built. There were so many breathtaking vistas that I couldn’t stop taking shots. I am not sure what mountains are in the distance but I doubt that they are the Alps, they look too small.

I know that I haven’t done justice to the majesty of the Palais des Papes, it is so grand that a rinky-dinky cell phone can’t capture the grandiosity of the whole compound. That might be the wrong word but I can’t think of another one, the Papal Palace may not be in the same league as the Vatican but it is still impressive nevertheless.

You might wonder why I took pictures of the ground but I thought it might be interesting to show everyone the ground that the baby girl and I were walking on, the same ground that has been walked on by others for centuries before us. I suppose the reason why I am so preoccupied with the beautiful old stone roads of Europe is because here in my town of Blandford, our roads don’t last two seasons before potholes erupt to destroy the shocks on your car. Why is it that roads built hundreds of years ago can withstand the punishment of time and our country roads here fall apart so quickly?

Enough with the horrible roads of Blandford, my mind is turning once more to the wonderful days in Avignon. The baby girl and I had drinks in the cafe featured in the picture of the Place des Papes that I took from up above. The heat was fairly unruly, we would walk for a bit and then we would feel the need to drink and sit in the shade immediately, we made quite the tour of cafe’s in Avignon, that is how hot it was during those two days.

I must admit that the baby girl and I didn’t go inside to visit the Papal Palace. There are two simple reasons, one was the admission price of twelve euros, we both felt that it was a little high in price, and two, it was just too hot, we were dripping with sweat and the thought of walking along a series of corridors for who knew how long was too much to bear at that moment. When we went to visit my cousins at Sainte-Etienne, I was embarrassed to say that we wimped out, but I did own up to our wimpiness, they didn’t judge, they were kind.

I am warning all in advance that tomorrow there is part 3 coming. It will be pictures from yet another side to Avignon, I have to unravel the issues I encountered with uploading the photos from my cell phone to Facebook. My blackberry and I had serious issues and a deluge of duplicate photos ensued onto Facebook, so I need to delete the duplicates and make sure that I don’t inadvertently delete the originals. My adventures in technology are quite mind boggling at times, I tell you.

Avignon in pictures, part 1

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Avignon, France, Palais des Papes, pictures, Pope of Avignon, postaday2012, tourism, travel, walking

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As I discovered with my cell phone in Arles, I was really getting interested in taking pictures, not just of monuments or beautiful buildings, but of contrasts in shapes, lighting and textures. I think that I was even discovering perspective. I have taken pictures before during my previous travels but never with a goal in mind. I have found that having a specific goal in mind changed my way of taking pictures and of seeing through the cell phone camera lens.

I was looking for scenes with a story to tell, I was also seeing shadows in a new way, how they emphasized the surrounding light and vice versa, the light illuminating the darkness from afar. The blues and greens came into sharp relief against the constant stone in Avignon’s backdrop. Avignon had trees and plants galore and coupled with the intense blue made for a very light and airy ambiance that permeated the entire city. Picture taking here was a real pleasure, everywhere I turned there was something beautiful to shoot.

The series of pictures that I took at the Place where the baby girl and I had a wonderful meal was to show not only a wonderful little restaurant, Gilbert & Muriel, but a great dessert and the perspective from where I was seated. I’m not sure if the perspective idea was very successful but I am learning and now that my thinking on photography has changed, I’ll be practicing a lot more.

I know that when I had written about Avignon while we were there, I had expressed a lot of appreciation for the wide open spaces within the city, especially when coming directly from the city of Arles. Avignon is a city that I plan to revisit in the future in order to get to know Provence better.

As my title suggests, tomorrow I will be posting part 2 which will show other sections of Avignon, just as beautiful just a little different in character. I hope that you enjoy the slideshow.

Avignon, the city of Popes

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Avignon, France, history, monuments, postaday2012, sightseeing, travel

We arrived in Avignon yesterday at 12:00 and thankfully our hotel was only a short distance from the train station. Speaking of train stations, we had an interesting time leaving Arles for Avignon. The train ride itself was unexceptional and short, only twenty minutes but trying to leave the station was another story. While we were waiting for the train, the baby girl and I noticed a group of gypsy women hanging out on the platform smoking cigarettes, talking and laughing. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who noticed because the railroad personnel soon came to us and others, politely asking for tickets and making it clear, politely, that without a ticket, you were not welcome on the platform. I think that this was a game between the authorities and the gypsy women over who had the power and who was in the right and the gypsy women were not about to give in, the railroad gentlemen politely told them that the Avignon police were coming to peacefully escort them away from the platform and they walked away laughing.

Once on board however we weren’t moving because the gypsy women in small pairings were running back and forth in the cars and out, this time over the loud speaker, the conducted stated that we were experiencing a delay because the police were definitely on their way. I told the baby girl that this was going to be in tomorrows edition, our train held hostage by a band of 8-10 gypsy women. They weren’t dangerous, just completely dismissive of the law. At least they seemed to be having fun thumbing their noses to the French railway, I was glad that the car had air conditioning because yesterday was the start of even hotter temperatures. We are going to melt way in the next few days. The train eventually started moving, no one was arrested and the game between the gypsies and the authorities was for another time, without us as the audience.

The baby girl and spent all day walking throughout the city of Avignon. It is grand, I felt very comfortable here, more so than in Nice and Arles. Nice was way too over run by tourists, cars and overbuilt, it I think lost its charm of twenty years ago. Arles, I really loved for its huge archaeological riches and tiny winding streets but I felt that the city itself was fatigued from all of the weight of history.

Avignon, I have the sense of sunlight, wide open squares, happiness and a feeling of well-being that permeates the air. We arrived very hungry and the hotel’s owner’s wife Sylvie recommended Ginette’s and Marcel’s Bistro de Tartines. A tartine is an open-faced sandwich which is wildly popular here. The baby girl had a smoked salmon with creme fraiche, capers and lemon. I had pesto, tomatoes and mozzarella cheese melted under the broiler as my tartine. We ate them under the Bistro’s parasols in the Place, there was a fountain and a beautiful black dog jumped into the fountain to cool off.

Afterwards we simply walked, we made our way up to the Rocher des Doms, which is the rock of the Doms, the highest elevation in Avignon. I took many pictures, the surrounding countryside was beautiful, the far off mountains majestic, it was breath taking. Right below us when we descended was the Palais des Papes, the Pope’s Palace, it represents centuries of power struggles between the church and the nation state and even between two church leaders themselves. It is vast and beautiful, to think of all the wealth designated to buildings these monuments to God when there was so much poverty back then, there still is so much poverty in this very world of today. It makes me sad to see the sharp contrast of all this wealth for a few while the majority have little.

As we kept walking throughout the different areas within Avignon, I kept taking pictures of whatever visually intrigued me. Hopefully when I get back home in a few days and upload them, my pictures will tell a complementary story to go with my words.

This morning after breakfast, the baby girl and I will be walking to the marche, I have to see it. The marche in France are one of my favorite places to visit, the sights, the noise, the aromas in the air, I love it. After the marche, it’s lunch followed by more walking until it is time for our 16:15 train to Lyons.