Ivre du Vin (Drunk on Wine)

Yesterday we visited the city of Avignon.  This 11th Century city with it's gothic architecture is completely surrounded by a wall 15 feet thick and is watched over by thousands of gargoyles and is much more modern than Arles.

We visited le Palais des Papes (the Popes Palace), which housed many Popes until it was taken over during the French Revolution and they scurried away to Italy.  It is a little tough to see in the photo above, but after the French Revolution all of the statues and carvings were decapitated as a sign of disgust for the Catholic church. Later in the day we wandered around town, peeked in to a few shops, and stopped at a street cafe for a glass of wine.

After lunch we hopped on a bus and visited Pont du Gard which is a Roman aqua duct built in 49 A.D.  It is pretty amazing to think that they did this just to transport water to the bath houses for the stinky Roman elite.  

In 1956 there was an extremely cold spell that wiped out all of the olive trees overnight.  This was a huge blow to the French economy and some trees were donated by surrounding countries in order to give them a new start.  This tree pictured (if you look closely you may be able to see my little Kermit that travels everywhere with me) was donated by Spain and is over 900 years old.  Damn!  I thought that some of the octogenarians on the boat were ancient, but that is some really old wood!

From here we went the Chateauneuf du Pape winery and sampled some yummy wines.  They were in fact so yummy that we could not escape without buying 6 bottles which we took back to the ship with us and had our own wine gulping later in the evening.  Needless to say, it was a little rough getting out of bed this morning.  We have been traveling up the river for much of the day on our way to Tain L'Hermitage so it is a good day to be lazy.  You may be asking yourself if we do anything besides look at really old stuff and drink more than our share of wine.  The answer to that question should be obvious.