On the road to Avignon (18 August)

Today's journey starts extremely early. We had been staying a 4 bed dorm with a Spanish couple. They are not on Busabout, but have been doing their own thing. We needed to be up at 6am to be ready for the 7:45am bus, so after dinner last night we completely packed our bags and left out the necessary clothes for today. After our walk and downloading emails to read on the bus we get to bed about midnight. The couple were already in bed. At 4:30am they wake up, and start packing all their gear into their bags. Needless to say they were less than quiet waking us up much much earlier than needed. By the time they left at 5:30am there was not much point in trying to sleep. We are interested to see what Spaniards in Spain will be like. In Stockholm we saw three Spanish couples arguing at each other at the top of their voices, while walking in the street. Another Spanish lady physically pushed past Shona to get off the boat quicker. So with this rude experience of Spaniards outside of Spain it will be a great experience to see what they are like in Spain. Watch this space and we'll keep you informed! The other frustration this morning is that the water bottle we left cooling in the mini fridge/freezer located in the stair well had disappeared between our morning shower and leaving. This doesn't sound like a big deal -but when the temperatures sit at over 30 degrees all day -it's Nice to have a cool refreshment! Our Red Bull also got stolen the day before -and I guess you can expect this sort of criminal behaviour when you're staying in a hostel full of Australians! Right Janine? We make it to the bus with plenty of time and just as well because there are three buses all leaving at the same time. La Tomatina is next week and lots of people are heading to Valencia to be part of the chaos. The bus ride is reasonably uneventful, so we catch up on reading emails (thanks everyone) and watching the French scenery whizz by. Avignon is on the bank of the Rhone river and right beside the city there is a small island where the bus stops to let the busabout people stay at the campground. We get off as well and then cross a bridge and go into the walled city itself to where we are staying right near the center of town. The bridge we cross is not the Pont d'Avignon (aka Pont St Benezet) which is the most famous monument in the city. That bridge was built after Benezet was instructed by God to join the Papal city to the other side of the river. He lifted a big rock to convince people he wasn't crazy, rather that there was divine intervention, so they all helped him build it. Over the next few hundred years around 20 floods (acts of God??) smashed the bridge down repeatedly... and after a while they got sick of rebuilding it and now only 4 of the 22 arches remain. We first off go on a wander around the city and do a tour of the Palace d'Papes -which is kinda underwhelming and a little bit boring... not helped by the fact that it gets very hot in this old (un-airconditioned) building. When there were troubles in Rome, the pope fled to Avignon and built a palace where eventually a total of 6 popes resided before it was safe to go back to Rome. Interesting factoid -Rome is actually where the pope is... for this reason Avignon was actually Rome for this period of time! Apparently it is the best Gothic palace left in Europe... however the highlight was probably the view from the roof while we ate our very cold ice blocks. We got the combination ticket to Pont d'Avignon -so it was pretty cool to have a look along that and see the views from the bridge/listen to the French song that keeps it famous. Dinner was in a resturant in the middle of the town square, omlette for Shona, steak (not so good) for Mike. A cold shower was well earned and sleep consisted of lying on the sheets because it was too hot to have them over us.