A Peek at the Pope's Palace

Today we took a day trip to Avignon to see the Pope's Palace. But not before stopping for our morning goody and cafe au lait. The pastries lined up on the bakery shelves are so beautiful. Every morning I have a croissant and Bill has a pain au chocolate. Bacon and eggs will just never cover it again.

With stomachs full of flaky, buttery, chocolatey goodness, we got in our little car and headed out. It is only about a 30-minute drive from Arles to Avignon, but parking took considerably longer. Avignon is a walled city that I was particularly interested in seeing because in 1305 (and for about 100 years after that) the Pope was in Avignon instead of Rome. Rome had gotten too corrupt and dangerous. When the powers-that-be decided that Avignon was the place to be, they took an existing bishop’s house and over the next years, added on and fancied it up until it was a magnificent papal palace. Quite a fixer-upper, I must say.

We lunched at a little snack bar, and then headed back to Arles. Bill had his handy dandy global positioning system (GPS), but it took awhile to find the satellite. In the meantime, we got a bit lost. I won’t say much about the neighborhood we found ourselves driving through, but this photo will give you a sense of what it looked like (and why I thought Bill might be a victim of an armed robbery while he took this picture).

Tonight Bill and I stopped at the Aldi's that is right around the corner from our hotel (Bill's side of the family -- particularly his mother -- will get a kick out of knowing that we found an Aldi's in Arles, France.) We bought some paper products, some snacks for the road, and four bottles of wine (including a Chateauneuf-du-Pape, a wine my sisters will well remember), and paid a TOTAL of 17 euros.

It is 9:30 in the evening, and we take off tomorrow morning. Believe it or not, at this point we are still not sure where we are going. We are heading north towards Germany, but we aren’t sure yet if we will stay in France or cross the border into Deutschland. I will tell you tomorrow where we landed.