Monday, June 8, 2009

Europe Day 8 of 59, Paris to Avignon

This morning marked the last time that we would wake up in Paris this trip. I know it's silly, but I had to take a picture from inside the car on our way to the train station.
Importantly, the Royal Trinite cafe which one can see through the windshield is where I got yesterday's nutella crepe. Does it tell you something about me that I took three or four bites and then said, "Fouquet. I should have taken a picture of this beautiful crepe." Expect a nutella crepe pic in the near future. I shall eat them until I remember to take that picture.
Alas, here is the Gare de Lyon, Paris's main train station. We really are leaving.
I cannot explain it, but I adore the activity in a busy train station. Train stations are just plain cool. Whereas airports are the opposite of cool. Bad words come to mind when I think of airports.
Here is the TGV... these suckers have been clocked at 300+ mph. Which reminds me. I started the stopwatch on my phone when our ride began, and never stopped it. So much for calculating how fast we actually went.
Barbie slept for all but a few minutes of this train ride, leaving me alone with this elegant view. Fortunately, the iPhone which is serving as this trip's camera and internet connection also has my 1,500 favorite songs on it, so I had that sucker on shuffle for three hours and it made the ride pleasant enough. The train must've been moving pretty damn fast, because every time I saw a point of interest such as a nuclear plant it was literally off in the distance within seconds.
We arrived in Avignon and saw this view from our hotel's front door. The city wall we're within is either Roman or Medieval, as it is clearly hundreds of years older than everything else. In fact, the wall looks Roman, while you have Medieval stone buildings inside it, and then even more modern buildings next to those. A study in contrasts that I couldn't get a pic of from the taxi, but will try for you tomorrow.
After getting settled, we walked down lovely streets such as this until we found what we were looking for, which actually took no more than five minutes.
There she is. The Palais des Papes, which according to Wikipedia is one of the largest and most important medieval Gothic buildings in Europe. Next door is the Notre Dame des Doms cathedral, with the gold statue at the top that I figure has to be Mary. I know the history involved the Popes hiding here from violence in Rome, er, I mean taking up residence here by choice, but the idea that when they returned to Rome other people took up residence here and claimed to be Popes too is awesome. The term "antipope" has a special musicality to it, no? I recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_des_Papes for those wildly interested in facts.
This was actually my view during lunch, and I was struck by the total lack of symmetry. This pic is ugly as heck (can you say "ugly as hell" for the former Pope's house?) but I included it because soon there will be pics of the other side of those windows.
I took a ton of pictures of this stone building, far too many in fact, but will only include the greatest hits.
Firing arrows from up there must've felt like shooting fish in a barrel.
This is inside. That's a room, not an outer wall. Can you imagine an interior room with a ceiling that high? No you cannot. Proof yet again that the medieval Popes were actually giants, perhaps from outer space.
This tradition of copping the pose of a statue began in Florence a few years ago. (As I typed that I realized that someday I have to take a chair to the Lincoln Memorial and get a pic next to him.) Let's just say that, based on this picture, I have definitive proof that I would have made an excellent Medieval Pope.
How amazing a space is this? And there are the windows that looked ugly from outside. Not so ugly anymore, are they? No, they're not. See. All that matters is that one's home looks good to the resident, not the neighbor. The Papes are teaching us humility with their Palais.
This cat was just hanging out. He/She looks almost exactly like Max, my family's cat when I was in high school and college. Max was the greatest, friendliest lap dog of a cat ever. Therefore the cat makes the blog.
Remember that first pic outside the Palais des Papes? Now we're next to those spires, not looking up at them.
As hard as I tried, I could not get a great pic of the p.o.v. of an archer up here ready to defend the Pope. So I took a metapic. Sue me.
This is the room below the massive room with the asymmetrical lunch windows. Obviously the center columns are holding up the room above's unimaginably heavy floor. But they sure look good, too. Function and form. Don't go around insulting Medieval architecture until you check it out in person. Renaissaince, shmenaissance.
I thought it was just too funny that the gift shop is in a chamber like this. I guess I wouldn't expect them to build an exterior gift shop when they already have all that space. Still... this is almost as funny to me as those Nun's behind the counter of trinkets at the Vatican.
And that's where the day ends. We came back to the room and caught a random broadcast of yesterday's Laker victory on TV, complete with French announcers. You cannot top hearing a guy shout in a thick accent, "Lammarrr Udomm Ooh Lah Lah!"
No food pics today. I hope that's not too disturbing. We went to sleep early instead of getting dinner and lunch's bolognaise was not recorded.

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