Rain, rain go away...

Well ok.  So it's been raining a lot.  But I am not worried.  I have a husband who is handy and I downloaded the schematics of Noah's Arc from the Internet.  Because we are in farm country, we figure we'll find some tools.  Trouble is, France is definitely lacking wood, so that might require some creative thinking.  Guess we'll have to make it out of here by car after all.  Let's hope we can drive up the mud track that passes for a road here without skidding into a lavender field.  Here's what happened to the last car that tried...

Our week started out quite promising.   On Monday we woke up to a wonderful sunrise before heading to the airport to pick up our friend Lynn, who was flying in from Toronto for a break in Provence.  

We stocked up on some French food goodies and then, after our run to the airport, had a nice lunch sitting in the warm sun on our patio, overlooking the distant Alps. We then went for a short ramble through olive groves and fields, admiring the fantastic views of mountains and valleys.  We came across a ruin and one very scary bug.  This guy had an inch long stinger on his butt!

 

 

 

 

Little did we know that this first day was the best we were going to get, weather-wise, as the sky clouded over and pelted us with rain for the next several days.  However, you can't fight the weather and we made the best of it.

We drove to Avignon, parked and made a beeline for the first warm restaurant we could find to gorge on cassoulet.  Not only was it raining, it was cold!  We trudged through pouring rain to the Palais de Papes (the Popes' Palace).  Lynn and I tried to decipher the French descriptions while Marcus took surreptitious photos, repeatedly getting caught by the undercover photo-cops. He risked deportation for this blog!  Here is a picture of the wall painting in Pope Clement VI's study.  We left the Palais and made a beeline back to the car.  It was getting dark and we had a long drive back.  We left Avignon without seeing the Pont d'Avignon!!!

For those of you who (like me) had not heard of the Palais des Papes up until reading this, please read the next paragraph.

*****Kristine's little history lesson******
(in no way do I contend that this is accurate)
Pope Clement V was a lover of good things - wine and opulent surroundings.  He was obviously a bit of a wimp, too, because he moved the pope's headquarters from Rome to Avignon in 1309 because of unrest after his election.  Every thing went along tickety boo (that is each successive pope made the palace bigger and encouraged more wine production), until they tried to return to Rome in 1377.  This prompted a Papal Schism - in which several popes claimed to be the true pope.  What really happened was that the papal council elected a pope who they then regretted electing.  No one liked him, and so a few other powerful cardinals declared (and were popularly backed) to be the Pope (these were called antipopes).  (Hmm... the Americans should have tried a Presidential Schism after W's re-election).  Regions throughout Europe had to choose between the Avignon Papacy or the Rome Papacy - you can imagine that this caused a few problems.  Finally in 1418 the council encouraged two antipopes to resign and a third was excommunicated (cause he refused to resign) and Pope Martin V was elected.  I guess everyone was glad to end the confusion because Pope Martin V stuck.  Even today the Papacy has not bothered to officially declare if the Avignon or the Rome line of Popes is the "true" line of succession. ***********************

Our next day in Provence was pouring rain and so we hung out in our cottage and trekked uphill to the small hamlet of La Blache.  It is a lovely little spot, even in the rain.

Despite more cold rain on Day 3, we decided to get out anyway and we visited another quaint hillside town called Lurs. We then made our way into Forcalquier for lunch.  We climbed our way up to the citadel which, on a nice day, would have given us spectacular views of the mountains.  Still it was a special place - even in the rain.  With very wet feet, we decided to try one more attraction - the Notre-Dame de Lures cathedral...as we drove up the mountain, we encountered warning signs for snow tires and chains, which we felt were a little out of season. However, when we actually DID encounter snow (!) we thought maybe our little Megane, with it's all season tires, should just turn right back around. We got a bit map muddled heading back to the cottage because it was dark and Kristine wasn't paying attention and we missed a turn.  But Madge rerouted us and, after driving along a very deserted track in the pitch black (mostly by feel: our headlights are pathetic!), we made it home.

Lynn decided to see if the weather was any better in Paris and so we drove her to the TGV on Friday. We miss her company already!  We will spend our remaining day here planning where to go next and dream of returning to Provence in the summertime!