I arrived around 6pm Wednesday and had an adventure finding my couchsurfing host Paula's apartment - a 30 minute bus ride from the center of Avignon. Paula is originally from Spain but has lived in Germany for several years and now France. She speaks English very well but we mostly speak Spanish. She had invited 4 friends over for a nice potluck dinner. It was going to be a picnic but there was a big storm so we had it on her balcony. In the pictures below Paula is the one on the right. The friends were from Spain, Syria and France, but the only common language was French. So I did my best to keep up. Paula shares the apartment with a roommate but he is off trekking in Iceland so I get a room for myself!
I soon realized that one day was not enough for Avignon and surroundings so I changed my train ticket for Albi to Sat. (though it costs a bit more). My hosts in Albi were ok with the change.
Avignon is another walled city but quite upscale. At some point the city fathers tore down the part of the wall across from the main train station to make a grand "Paris-like" main boulevard entrance to the city. The big sites here are the Avignon bridge -known by the children's song about it- and the grand Palace of the Popes. The lines were long as this is August and prime tourist season but I didn't pay for the bridge entrance as I got mixed in with a Japanese tour group and was in before I knew what had happened.
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