Today we took a bus to St Remy de Provence, a 45 minute bus ride from Avignon that cost 1.50Euro each way instead of 2.1 euro as we have the Zou Malin discount card.
St Remy de Provence is known for a couple of things, Vincent Van Gogh spent about a year here in Saint Paul Asylum and created many painting while here. The Asylum is still in operation, but there is a museum and a recreation of the room he stayed in that you can tour, we passed. There are some fantastic placards of many of his paintings on the 1KM or so walk from town up to the Asylum which were great to review, I think there were 20 of them.
There is also an archaeological site called Glanum from the first century BC that eventually was rediscovered in 1920, there are some ruins that you can tour. Again we chose to pass on this, we have a couple of towns to visit coming up that we will be visiting Roman Ruins.
In the same area as the Asylum and Glanum there are 2 monuments called Les Antiques that you can visit for no charge. They are the Mausoleum of Jilii from 30BC and l'Arc du Triumph from 20AD. Both are very impressive, they marked the entrance to Glanum.
On arrival in St Remy we stopped by the tourist information booth and were told about a nice hike, the hike starts by the Asylum, and since we are near here now we decided it would be a good time for a hike. We had brought sandwiches with us today as we weren't sure of our exact plans, so it worked out perfect.
The woman that told us about the hike said it was not too hilly or difficult and pointed out a spot on the map that we must go to see some beautiful views. We are off. The beginning of the trail had lots of signs identifying the different vegetation and trees. It was a steady uphill climb, but nothing too difficult, though very glad to reach the top. The detour to the lookout was fantastic. Some beautiful views of the city, and 2 holes in the rock up top that were very cool to look through. It was a gorgeous sunny day about 20 degrees, hot climbing up, but nice and cool when we got to the top at the lookout and has our picnic. There were 6 people on top when we reached there, but they all left quickly. We had the place to ourselves until we were finished lunch and then 2 more people arrived. There are quite a few trails that converge here that we didn't realize, we had only seen 3 people so far all morning so were a little surprised to see these people on top.
Off we head back down to the St Remy, love circular walking trails, but sometimes I think going down is as rough as going up. Lots of downhill here, saw 4 people starting up, and one woman ran by us on the way down. Part of the trail is very groomed and easy, but we were passed on a very rough part, no idea how they run on this stuff. The hike took us close to 3 hours.
Back into town and we picked up some more water, apples and oranges and had a break. Total was just over 1.5 Euro, if you bought a small bottle of water out of the fridge it was 1.50Euro. One thing here is bottled water is extremely inexpensive if you purchase it from a grocery store, we are lucky that drinking water is fine from the taps so have only had to purchase when our refillable bottles are emptied if it is a hot day.
Wandered around old town for about an hour, it is a pretty little old town centre, lots of shops open and little restaurants, we can see why many like this little town to visit.
Bus back to Avignon and pick up things for supper on the way back to the apartment. It is about a 1KM walk from the bus station. Andre lucks out on some new shoes from the sidewalk sale, not too many size 46 shoes to be found and one of the pairs he brought with him are finished after all our walking.
Start a load of laundry, laundry must be done often when we travel in Europe as machines are tiny, and so far we haven't had a dryer anywhere in Europe unless it is a combined washer dryer and our experience with those is they just don't dry. Trying to figure out buttons is always a challenge, obviously picked the wrong button as it took 1.5 hours for the machine to finish, these clothes are going to be really clean. Go to hang them up and the clothes-rack is half broken, this won't do. Hang some on hangers over the shower and the rest on the clothes-rack, get in touch with the property manager and he will deliver us a new one tomorrow.
Off to the Opera House now for a symphony orchestra concert put on by the National Avignon Provence orchestra. This is a much smaller opera house than the one in Nice, but the acoustics are equally as good. This time we bought nose bleed tickets on purpose, they guy selling them told us the acoustics are still good up there, and it was fantastic. We were right in the middle and so few tickets sold up there we were free to move around wherever we wanted. There were only about 300 tickets sold for the concert and the Opera House seats 800. Like the Opera House in Nice the original 1825 one was destroyed by fire, and this new one was built in 1846. We had fantastic views of the entire orchestra so were very happy with the tickets we purchased. After the intermission about 20 more young people arrived in the upper seats where we were, I'm guessing if you hang around outside and there are seats available and you are young they will let you in. One thing that we do love here is if you are under 26 most museums we have seen are free, and I did see some kind of rush seating on day of concert for young people. Think I liked watching the percussionists the best, there were 2 of them. Before the intermission I think each of them banged their instruments about 2 times, most of the time was just sitting there. After the intermission they were basically running from one instrument to another, it was very fun to watch. I had no idea there were at least 3 different xylophones, as well as different drums, triangles and other noise makers.
Walked around just for a few minutes after the concert. Lots of flags have been put up around the main square as it is Festival Andulou here the next few days. Hoping we see some paella being made somewhere.
A fantastic day, looking forward to the rest of the weekend.
Steps today 30,000 for 19 km
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