Avignon afoot
This apartment is on the top floor of what was once a monastic dormatory. When its top floor was restored, the new owner had the amazing good sense to have the ribbed vaultting of the original ceiling right there where we could touch it. [Music] [Music] Don’t worry. Be careful. [Music] [Music] away. [Music] Oh, yeah. [Music] Yeah, man. [Music] A romantic evening walk to the street of the Dyres brought beauty in the deep shadows, but also a profound sadness. Those magnificent plain trees, a kind of European sycamore, were all reduced to huge stumps. A spreading incurable disease had killed them all. Happily, my memories of a decade old visit remained vivid. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] couples from Memphis. An all-purpose closein tour brought us to this small uncomplicated village with its typical 12th century church and the former mill race carved into its riverbeds clear waterway. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Oh, I see. We spend a lunch hour paused in an ochre village renowned for the variations on ochre hues. Good food, okay wine enjoyed in view of the mayor’s office windows yonder. [Music] As shadows overtake our provenance sky, only the sad but regal Pont Duggar aqueduct remains to be enjoyed. If you were a kid, where I was a kid, playing among hillside rocks and sliding in playground baseball games, your tough and reliable and vaguely blue everyday trousers have a clear linkage to the city whose fabric mills these waters kept in motion. denim pants that we just called jeans. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Yeah. [Music] Okay. [Music] Quickly we pass an abbey whose scenic buildings are background for a July bounty of lavender. Their extravagant color is long gone by September. The Roman stoneworks we drive past are the last traces of the old Roman city of Glenom. [Music] An hour or so south along the Ran River is old Arl whose truly ancient Roman cemetery deserves a visit for reflection. Le alis comp is provenal for the shanzil li a famous boulevard in Paris whose meaning is the allesian fields. Vincent Van Go and friend Paul Goana used to paint here around the turn of the last century before madness drove the former to terms in a local asylum and the latter sailed for Samoa and semiclad Polynesian models. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Today’s 12th century cathedral in town is always thoughtprovoking. There are two parts of it to note in particular. One is the display of carved stone Bible stories particularly on the front of central themed church and on the capitals of the adjacent cloister. Note the ceilings of the covered cloister walkways. Round barrel vaulting alternates with more ornate Gothic style ribbed vaulting. It’s a design change that appeared in the mid13th century. [Music] [Music] Now, part two of the features that move me is the stone floor in the centrofime church. Its uneven texture reminds me of literal centuries of the humble believers whose bare or santled feet have trod these aisles, bringing their joys and sorrows, prayers for illness or disability, maybe wishes for a good marriage or for bountiful crops to the altar whose cross speaks of Oh.
There’s a warmth to Avignon, it seems to me, that’s somewhat scarce in a metropolitan city such as Marseille. This is a place to spend several days or maybe a week, just enjoying the history and, well, savoring the mood of the town. And even less cosmopolitan Arles, that old repository of ancient ruins and the neighborhood of Vincent Van Gogh, is a short train ride away.