We were all still a bit spent from yesterday’s travel, so we’d agreed that today would be a late-as-it-needed-to-be start and just some light exploring on foot. Benton and Tim headed to the grocery to pick up some light supplies and brought them back for a late breakfast, and then all three of us headed out to poke around the old city.
It is a little odd to have accidentally landed ourselves in a town that is having a major festival (Festival d’Avignon), and that festival is occurring throughout the old city, which is the same area we are primarily exploring. It’s also a performing arts festival, which seems to mostly be theater…and only one-third of our party is remotely capable in the language.
As it turns out, there are actually two festivals: the “In” festival and the “Off” festival. Our speculation is that the In festival includes the shows in the larger venues, and the Off festival are shows that are in the 50-100 smaller/makeshift venues. Regardless, the old city is absolutely plastered with promotional posters. And, we have yet to sit down to eat anywhere without having at least one group of performers stop and do a little performing to promote their show (they then hand out postcard-sized cards with the details for the show itself). It’s been quite an experience!
Despite not intending to do any “tours” today, we did find ourselves at the Pont Saint-Bénézet / Pont d’Avignon bridge and doing the self-guided audio tour there. There are only four arches remaining of the ~22 that existed at one time, and a summary of the history of the bridge is: it was too narrow to take horses or carriages across, and it had sections collapse along its span fairly constantly over the 500 years of its (full river) existence from the 12th to the 17th century (one video tried to call out that this wasn’t poor engineering, but, rather, the “light ice age” hitting the area and causing unforeseeable challenges).
After the bridge tour, we found a cafe and had a nice lunch (and got a couple of festival-related performances along with it) and then headed back to the apartment, where we relaxed for a couple of hours until Benton and Lucy headed out for dinner and Tim hopped on a Carson-related call. Benton and Lucy’s initial planned restaurant was full, but they found a place with Vietnamese street food that was good, and they brought dinner back for Tim.
An interesting/memorable experience of the day:
Benton: Lucy’s bug bites (she attracts them at a pretty high rate) and the degree to which the Pont d’Avignon was a complete civil engineering fail.
Tim: the heard (but not seen) performance of the Malcolm in the Middle theme song (“Boss of Me” by They Might Be Giants) while we were eating lunch. This had to be part of a show promoting itself, as there were a couple of other recognizable mainstream songs from the past, and they actually repeated the Malcolm in the Middle theme song a couple of times within earshot of us. Tim planned to jump up and record it if they played it again—Alana was fairly obsessed with the show a few years ago—but missed his opportunity.
