I’m in Avignon! I left Boston Friday, July 1 and flew overnight to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Logan airport was pretty packed with lots of travelers headed out on vacation. CDG was the same way, but with a partial labor strike on top of it – welcome to France ! About 10% of the CDG flights were canceled, but the only impact it had on me was that the normal RER train from the airport to the TGV station at Gare du Lyon was out of service and I had to take a bus. This turned out to be a positive, as I had an extended conversation in French with the woman sitting next to me, who was returning to her native France from San Diego. She gave me some suggestions of what to see around Avignon, and also pointed out a more efficient route to Gare du Nord from the endpoint of the adhoc shuttle bus, Stade du France / Saint Denis. I made it to the TGV for Avignon with only 10 minutes to spare, so she may have saved me a lot of headache.
I spent the rest of Saturday and much of Sunday just walking around the city and getting oriented. Sunday I woke up around 4am (jetlag) and was out walking by 6am. It was well past sunrise and bright as could be, yet the city was completely deserted. Every few minutes I’d pass a single tourist like me, but otherwise it was empty. Eerie to see these vast spaces intended for hundreds to be empty but in full sunlight. Here’s some photos from that morning.
The Palais du Pape stands atop a rocky cliff at the northern tip of Avignon, overlooking the Rhone river. Tucked in alongside it is an understated park, named Rochier des Domes. It has paths, lawns, ponds, fountains, swans, goldfish, sculptures, and a symbolic small vineyard. But my favorite installation is a human sundial about 30 feet across. A stone marker gives instructions on where to stand based on the day of the year. Your shadow then falls upon a perimeter stone marker that reveals the current solar time. A second stone marker gives a long explanation of the difference between solar time and “legal time”. The whole contraption is named a « cadran solaire analemmatique », and is credited to one G. Bonnet, who designed this installation in 1930. Some other sculptor constructed it. The concept dates back to the Greeks and Romans, and there are apparently hundreds of such things in and around France, but I don’t recall seeing one before.
In addition seeing all the big things that every tourist will see, I noted some small details that made me happy during my first couple days. Here’s a few of those to round out this first of many Avignon posts.
