Self Guided Walking tour Avignon

 Today was a tourist day, a real tourist day. We have map from tourist information which has 3 self walking tours to explore the city. Today we did 2 of them, “Museums and City mansions”, and “Papal Promenade”. We were in 4 free museums, some churches, and saw the outside of many beautiful mansions. A couple of the free museums were mansions, or decommissioned churches that had been donated to the city and are now museums. We also visited the library, another converted mansion, that had fantastic wood ceilings.

There is also a beautiful lookout above the papal palace that we visited again today, there is an outdoor photography display from an outdoor ballet in the 60's that from what we understood was cancelled after everything was set up and practices were completed. Another interesting thing we saw in one of the museums were paintings from when the Avignon Bridge was still fully intact, and also from when it was starting to fall apart. It was never a straight bridge because of the islands they connected to, these islands have moved over the years and are gone, there is just the one island left that divides the 2 arms of the Rhone.

We started at 10AM this morning and finished at 5:30PM tonight, with a stop back at our apartment for about an hour at lunch. It was a great day. We have one more walking tour to do another day called “Strolling along the Old Streets”, it says on the map it will take 3 hours, I imagine that will be a full day for us again! The old town here, is beautiful much bigger than Nice old town, and still lots of streets we haven't even been on yet. The busiest pedestrian shopping streets have been upgraded and are no longer cobblestone which makes it nice for walking, but a little of the charm is gone, as soon as you get off these pedestrian streets you are back on cobblestone, no heels here.

A great day just staying around here, lots of steps, literally lots of steps up to the lookout, over 250 stairs.

Totals steps today 22,000 or 13.5KM

An example of e of the day placards at each stop talking about what it was, who build it, the history of who owned it and who lived there. Wendy's map was in English but less details

The courtyard of the first free museum that we went to see

The second museum was more about naturel history

 

Part of the original ramparts which were smaller. Once the Popes came to Avignon the town grew and they had to enlarge the ramparts to protect the population

This church was converted into a museum, this is where we went to see the singers last weekend

This old pedway connects a school to the library

Antique ceilings from what was once a mansion

Avignon from across the river

only about 250 steps to go up

Pont d'Avignon, the ramparts and Villeneuve d'Avignon

The Rhone river

At the public garden at the top next to the Palais des Papes and the Cathedral

Would love to go to Chateauneuf-du-Pape but hard to get there even if it's only 12 kms.  About 1 hour and you need to take 2 buses, will see

An exhibition of about 20 outdoor large photographs around the park. From a theater production many years ago

What goes up must come back down

My tour guide finding the next stop

Le Palais des Papes

Now a hotel that charges a minimum of 500 Euro a night

One of the towers of Le Palais des Papes

What used to be the mint where they made coins (money)

A chapel inside the Cathedral

Le Palais des Papes and the square in front, the largest square in town by a lot

The Cathedral

Le Petit Palais

Another free museum

And then our last museum

This one had period furnishing

Servant's staircase

Did not ask why

Exhibit on Le Ruban de Provence which we saw the parade last weekend.  All about keeping the traditional way they used to dress alive

Not far from our house

An old Chapelle remains

You can not see the church on the right. I like the unknown building. On the right of it is our street

The door was open to this little courtyard