Our day trip to Avignon was even better than our trip to Aix and we really fell a little bit in love with Avignon. In fact, we plan to go back for an overnight or few day stay sometime in the future. The train ride to Avignon is about twice as long as Aix at 90 minutes and more expensive. I believe it was 10 euros each way to Aix and 25 each way to Avignon; both well worth it. 

We took another 8:30ish train so we’d arrive shortly after 10 in the morning for our day in Avignon. From the train station we walked toward the old town with a quick stop at the tourist office to purchase a one-day Avignon pass, which includes entry to many of the sites and free public transportation for about $25 per person. Based on all the places we planned to visit, this seemed like a good deal. Once we purchased our passes, we found a cafe with tasty French baked goods, this time macarons and a praline croissant.

After the cafe, we walked through the town to our first destination, the papal palace. One of the most interesting times in Avignon’s history, and the reason Chad has wanted to visit for years, is that the papacy moved there from Rome in the 14th century. Then, after it moved back, there were several anti-popes (who each claimed to be the real pope) based in Avignon. It is a fascinating history and worth reading about online.

In addition to the intriguing history, the Palais des Papes became our favorite attraction because they incorporated a really cool augmented reality technology. Everyone who visits is given a tablet the call a “histopad” that shows what the various rooms would have looked like in the 14th century or other times in the palace’s history. As we pointed the histopad in various directions, it filled in that part of the room with furnishings and items you could click on to learn more about. It really brought history to life. I hope to see this at more historic attractions in the future.

After the Palais des Papes, we visited the church next door, Cathédrale Notre-Dame-des-Doms d’Avignon. It is a very pretty and impressive church with a gorgeous gold Mary statue towering over it. 

At this point it was lunch time, so we headed to the Halles de Avignon market hall to pick up some food for a picnic. We chose olives with herbs de provence and brandade (cod) pastries from one very friendly stall, who even heated our pastries for us, and a quiche and an aubergine tarte from another. We took our food to the Jardin des Doms, though unfortunately most of the park was closed for renovations. But we found a spot on the steps with a good view of the Rhone River and enjoyed our picnic very much.

After lunch we visited a well-known Avignon site that neither of us had heard of, the Bridge of Avignon (Le Pont d’Avignon, also called Pont Saint-Bénezet). Apparently there’s a famous French folk/children’s song about dancing on the bridge in Avignon. It’s also no longer in use for various reasons (engineering) and has an interesting story about its 12th century construction that is worth reading about. Our Avignon pass gave us access to the bridge and its small museum and audio guide, which was very interesting. 

After the bridge, we decided to head across the river to the Villenueve (meaning “new town” but it also dates back to Medieval times) to see the old monastery. We’d planned to use our bus pass, but just missed the bus and decided to take an Uber to save our energy rather than waiting up to a half hour in the sun. However, we took the bus back over after and it worked well. 

The monastery was also very cool and had an interesting history behind it connected to Pope Innocent VI. They had a very good written guide in English to loan visitors that helped explain how the monastery was built and worked.

There was much more to see in Avignon, including within Villenueve, but it was late afternoon at that point and we were pretty worn out. We took the bus to the Avignon train station but walked to a bar tabac near the tourist office to rest with a beer while we waited for the train we wanted. Once again I was able to buy tickets on the app, which was very convenient. 

Avignon was incredibly beautiful and interesting and we look forward to visiting again and being able to enjoy it at night.