Not really knowing where would be best to get a train to Carcassonne, I kept an eye on my map of France as the TGV neared the mouths of the Rhône. All I knew for sure was that I had no wish to see Marseille on this trip, if ever. And then my eye lingered on Avignon and its surroundings, which were very familiar names as far as my taste in wines goes. Mount Ventoux…Nîmes…Châteauneuf-du-Pape…my mouth was watering at the thought of visiting. So Avignon it was.

As the shuttle bus from the TGV station reached the old walled city center, I saw a sign that gave me great pleasure: it advertised hotel rooms for only €36 per night. I made a quick mental note of the surrounding “landmarks” to help me find my way back there from wherever the bus stopped, and noted the name of the hotel.

It was the local outlet of the Etap Hotel chain, which I came to appreciate immediately in my journey. They’re cheap, they’re supremely convenient for zero-planning travels, and they’re not at all bad, in fact they’re all I want in a hotel room: a secure place to leave my bags so I can go exploring the town/region unencumbered, a bed where I can sleep later, and a bathroom. In addition, I reluctantly concede that the television was handy for brushing up on my French. But other than the price the best aspect of the Etap chain is the 24-hour access: I could arrive in the middle of the night and get a room using the little ATM-like machine in the front hall without having to have a desk clerk present, and anytime I got in from a night of wandering or dining I had a 6-digit code which would let me into the hotel and then to the room via keypads. Very convenient.

Avignon was great. The only thing I didn’t like about this part of my vacation was that I had no guidebook with me and hadn’t researched the region’s history (a recurrent regret, balanced by the relatively carefree nature of the travelling method). I knew I had studied something related to Avignon sometime in my past, but at first I couldn’t remember what it was the city was most known for. And then I started checking out the city and remembered: the papal schism! Of course! This was “the other Rome.” And eventually Picasso came to my mind too, though the only demoiselle I saw there who resembled the ones in his painting was a hooker in a back street of a red-light district (and yes there was a certain air of familiarity to her look).

At this point the weather had become even warmer and “nicer” (if you’re into sun and clear skies, which I am not) than it had been in Switzerland, and my day-and-a-half in Avignon was sunny and bright. The evening I arrived therefore was pleasant, almost summery, and it made my stay there very easygoing to have the convenience of the hotel (which was at the southwest corner of the old city, at the St Roch gate) allowing me to stroll at random.

What I noticed above all about Avignon is how old it is…the place is reeking with age, yet it’s got plenty of life in it; in a sense Paris is the same way, though its apparent age is much younger than Avignon’s is. Undoubtedly there are parts of Avignon where the city’s age is architecturally self-evident, such as the streets where I could touch both walls flanking the street with my fingers, a sense of narrowness I have only previously seen in Stromness (in the Orkney Islands, off the north tip of Scotland). And the city’s showpiece, the Palace of the Popes, was definitely worth the time it took to tour, even though some exhibit areas were under construction and therefore in quite the chronological disarray. How Avignon has aged can be seen in the laundromat I found southeast of the center of town, an old building (as they all are) which in its street-level one-room laundromat had fluorescent lighting and white foam ceiling panelling straddling a large near-black wooden beam which cut through the room at a noticeable un-plumb angle.

After my visit to the papal palace (and the Pont d’Avignon of song fame), I was quite hungry and wandered around the northwest part of the city, where to my surprise I found a gay web bar (rainbow flags are so helpful for wayfinding sometimes). This was the Arobase Web Salon/Cyber Resto (14/16 rue du Limas, 04 90 16 02 18). I had a croque monsieur and a huge “side” salad with coffee and water, and I settled down at a computer to get caught up online for the first time in four or five days.

The museums in town, too, are decent, but their buildings are like extra exhibits which almost overshadow the main displays. I visited the Calvet Museum, the Lapidary Museum, and the Angladon Museum. The Calvet had some delightful surprises such as the Camille Claudel piece of her brother Paul and a “faun” of such exceptionally real execution that if he had suddenly straightened up from his coy slouch and said “hi” I wouldn’t have been too surprised…delighted, but not especially surprised (he had a lovely body, I would almost say delicious, though the face was a bit wrong for it). The Lapidary Museum was an odd one, and for a long time I couldn’t decide if I like it at all or not—it’s cold and cluttered and feels like a back-room arrangement—but then I noticed there were some truly impressive phalluses displayed on various pieces (the Anthrophage in particular) and decided that they served as punctuation marks on deadpan sentences, as it were. And the Angladon ended too quickly, partly in the sense that I had to keep my visit short because of their imminent closing time and partly in the sense that the collection’s range was flung bizarrely through many little rooms, leaving me with an incoherent impression of what was probably a formidable array.

After dinner that night I considered extending my stay in Avignon by one more day, but then I decided I needed to get on with my journey and that I could always come back to visit Avignon at a future date, as I intend to do with Sion. And I took a train out of town the next morning, destination Carcassonne; it was easier to leave that morning because although it was finally raining a little, the city didn’t look incredibly beautiful in the rain (as Paris does)—if it had, I would have had to rethink my departure. The trip was a two-leg journey, changing trains at Narbonne, I think around six hours long, and it took me within maybe 100 yards of the Mediterranean (at Sète, which had just been in the news the previous day or two as a possible host city for the next America’s Cup, landlocked Switzerland having won it that week). Though I sighted the Mediterranean, I had no particular urge to get off the train and go to it; I’ve known for years that I’ll have my introduction to the Mediterranean when the time is right, and this wasn’t the moment.

I had lunch at a little joint near the train station in pleasantly breezy Narbonne after strolling (with my bags) around to get a feel for the city. It was a sort of a corner diner, I suppose, half-full with locals and their dogs and kids, with people of all ages there (those my age and younger were playing a particularly lively game of foosball). I had a mixed salad with tuna, as well as a small carafe of a local red wine, and relaxed with copies of the International Herald Tribune and Le Monde as I had an hour’s layover to kill. And then it was on to Carcassonne.

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Text © 2003 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted