Hope everyone is doing fine!
Just came back from my franch lesson in Saint Peray and im trying to get dry. Today it was 28 C, very nice but around 2 pm when I was going to my french course it started POURING DOWN rain.. I had my "rain" jacket and boots on but still my pants got all wet and so did some of my books in my bag aswell.. Well well, the rain was not going to stop me from going to the french lesson.. hehe. Luckily I got a ride home from 2 men from my french group, One italian and one english, they were nice as it started raining again after the lesson ended. Oh and today the new teacher assistants came, I met the Italian, Spanish (shes from Argentina) and English one, havent met the German one yet, but its nice not being the single assistant in School, and they all seem nice. Well as I was supposed to post this yeserday but this site was not working well for me lefts hope its better now. So lets start with what I did on friday.
On friday I was supposed to have class with Aurélie, but she was still on sickleave meaning no lessons. But I decided to go to visit one of Naciras classes that I havent met yet (I think its the only one, in the collége I havent met) They are in year 5, meaning they are in their second year of English and they were soooo good, better than the ones who has had 3 years of English. In that class was Chloé (the daughter of the other principal who showed me around town my frst day here). She was very happy to have me as a teacher, so from now on I will have this class every other week. It will be fun to work with me. I also met up with Sara after lunch to buy our tickets to Avignon, which was ok price. I payed 28 euros for a return ticket. Then we went for a smoothie in our fav place. This time i tried out the smoothie called CANDY, its with peach, orange and strawberry. It was delish! The guy working there was so nice and his father who came to say hello, they introduced us to the whole family, gave us their numbers if we wanted to go to french classes that their mother/wife gave (but unfortunally its the same days and hours I go to my other lesson. In the evening Sara came over and we had dinner, drank wine and watched a DVD. She wasnt here for so long as we were going up early the following day.
We met up at 8 at the train station, both really tired but ready for this trip. We slept though the over 1 hour train ride down to Avignon. Both were wearing jackets as we had been told by people, that its very windy and that it will be very cold there. Cold my a**.. It was so hot there.. lol and got hotter by the hour, it was like 26-27 C..
So we 2 things we wanted to do, it was to go to the Palais des papes and the Point saint- Benezet. But before we got there we stopped by the beautiful turist office which is connected with a church.
No I did not go to England. Isnt it cool? An English phonebooth in France.. lol
The local Theatre
Le Palais des Papes
Outside the palace there was a funny statue, a cute elephant.. lol (just had to take this pic for my mum)
Inside the Palais des papes. So here is a bit of info about this castle:
Avignon became the residence of the Popes in 1309, when the Gascon Bertrand de Goth, as Pope Clement V, unwilling to face the violent chaos of Rome after his election (1305), moved the Papal Curia to Avignon, a period known as the Avignon Papacy. The popes departed Avignon in 1377 returning to Rome again.
Inside of the rooms, they had some gorgeous windows
The roof of one of the rooms, you can still see a bit of the paintings they had on the roof.
Paintings they have preserved.
Glass from broken windows
This is one of the inner gardens (it kind of reminds me of a similar pic I took in Durham Cathedral.. :p)
Me listening to info about the room.
One chapel
Another beautiful window
After the Palais des popes we went for lunch and had a very yummy pizza in the centre of the town, and italian ice cream for dessert. The we walked in the older part of town, it really felt like we were in another country than France. Like Portugal or Italy, it was really nice, we both said: I wanna live here! hehe.. Here is one of the streets:
Then we got to our final destination: Pont St. Bénézet
or as the song says:
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse, l'on y danse
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse tous en rond
We bought a combo ticket at the palais, so we didnt need to pay when we entered the bridge. Before going up to the bridge we saw this really nice olive tree, I wanted to pick some but there was to many people there.
Happy me at the begining of the bridge.
So a little info about this bridge:
The bridge originally spanned the Rhône River between Avignon and Villeneuve-lès-Avignon on the left bank. It was built between 1171 and 1185, with an original length of some 900 m (2950 ft), but it suffered frequent collapses during floods and had to be reconstructed several times.The bridge was finally put out of use by a catastrophic flood in 1668, which swept away much of the structure. It was subsequently abandoned and no more attempts were made to repair it. Since then, its surviving arches have successively collapsed or been demolished, and only four of the initial 22 arches remain intact today.
This is whats left of the bridge
The view to the right of the bridge, if you continue that way after a while you will end up in Valence:
After visiting the bridge we went to sit by the river, relax and enjoy the sun a bit. We wanted to visit another part of Avignon aswell but there was a strike (surprise) so there were no busses. So instead we went to the shopping street and visited some stores. We both ended up buying something in Pimpkie and in Sephora (found a new perfume that I luuuuuuve). By 6 pm we took the train back to Valence, we both sleep the way back again, lol.
I was invited to party with the chileans but I was knackerd from not having slept enough and the trip that I decided to stay home, watch a movie and snack on Nachos with Guacamole :p
On sunday I had plans on going to the cinema with Sara and Pierre BUT the weather was sooo nice that we decided to take a little trip instead. We decided to visit a little town outside of Valence called Romans also known as the capital of luxurious shoes (im not kidding). They have many shoe factories, and loads of shoe shops for being such a small town. As it was sunday it was a bit dead but we decided to visit the Shoe museum. You were not allowed to take pics inside but what we saw was old shoes, how shoes are made and shoes from different centurys and from different parts of the world. This is the Shoe Museum:
Then we walked around in town, and at a park I found this funny statue and just HAD to take a pic:
Yep its a woman showing her butt.. LOL..
Later we had a late lunch, we had belgian waffles with nutella..mmm.. and strawberry smoothie. Then it was time to go home, to do some french homework and plan mondays lessons.
I would like to show you more pics, but just loading up these pics has taken 3 hours!!!! So these will have to do!
Well im off to watch Friends in French :P
À Bientôt!
Song of the day: Gotta have a Le roi soleil song.. so Mon essentiel for you ;)
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