Somehow, somewhere, in my life along its cobblestoned way, I introduced the notion to myself that Avignon and ABBA were an item, that they belong together. I simultaneously in a different part of my brain connected Avignon with the Arthurian legends of Camelot. Avignon is such a beautiful name, it oozes the richness of medieval pageantry and it shimmers with 70ties Euro glam. I think Avignon, in my nonce, appropriated the tune of Waterloo, the ABBA song, one that I disliked for its shoutiness even as I sang along. The 3 syllables of Avignon are the 3 syllables of Waterloo, a mixup that left unobserved for 30 or 40 years, in an uninspiring section of my mind, grew into a shapeless mouldy form – that like many moulds possesses some unlikely qualities, in this case, a hazy, sunshined, seventies citadel. I had read and reread over the years that the Papacy had decamped to Avignon for a period in the middle-ages. When I first learned about it as a boy of maybe 10 years of age, the romance of middle-ages’ chivalry and the suffusion of mystique that continuity down centuries stretching into millennia bestowed upon the Papacy, and the fact that as a Christian Brothers student in Ireland in the 70ties the Catholic church was on our side against the Brits all fused in my mind to create a pleasing penumbra around the name Avignon. This probably later led to the appropriation of ABBA and the song Waterloo, about another somewhere in Europe the location of which I had zero clue. Before we came here, in the months leading up to our departure from Ireland, I scarcely knew where we were heading to. The name Pernes-les-Fontaines spoken in Ireland is hard to visualise written, and thus hard to look up online, and as Ali was taking care of the arrangements, I was content with the context, ‘that it was near Avignon’. I had no idea where Avignon was either, but I knew how to spell it and thus could look it up. I did zero research, my pre-trip interaction with Avignon was limited to its input into Google maps to ascertain roughly the length of the drive from Bilbao. Almost 9 hours was the answer.
It was dark when we arrived in Avignon that first night in February. I had driven all the way on motorways from Bilbao to the exit for Avignon. I was glad to be off the motorway, as it meant we were closer to our destination, and also because any potential breakdown situation would be easier to deal with on a single lane road than on a fast moving multi-lane motorway. I was continually perturbed by the engine warning lights, my constant companions, their ciudado yellow more alarming in the dark, so much that I counted down the last twenty kms or so to the exit, fearing that fate the joker might trip us up just as we thought we’d made it. The drive into Avignon was about 30 minutes on a fast single lane road with frequent roundabouts. Roundabouts at night can be tricky as I struggle sometimes to see the kerbsides that delimit the road, a challenge intensified by my driver’s position on the RHS of the right side of the road. Driving on the surface road in the dark brought its own challenges so when we hit the traffic lights of Avignon and the high city walls appeared without fanfare on my left, I was relieved. We drove parallel to the city walls in a straight line for what felt like a couple of kms. Their matter of factness, present and shaping the contours of a modern city, reminded me of Xian in China, another modern city resolved to live with the impositions that an encompassing wall imposes. That first impression of Avignon, gained from driving along one side of its wall in the dark on my first day in France, was of a medium sized city with a lot of history.
3 weeks or so later, we resolved to visit Avignon for a gander. Driving in daytime we saw the Rhone river for the first time, complete as any serious European river should be, with barges and purposeful commercial river traffic. I had learned that the Rhone passes through Avignon in the due diligence Google search before we left. It is pleasing to learn some information and then shortly afterwards to have the opportunity to apply that information to the real world. In this case, I was able to say to my wife, ‘That’s the Rhone’. Now my seventies Camelot image of Avignon, a sort of post counter culture revolution cinematic take on the Arthurian legend, with episodic camerawork and explicit romance, was further developed by inclusion of the Rhone river.
Another Euro name from the geography classes of my childhood, often confused in my youthful mind with the Rhine, though sounding cooler, more French, and now associated with wine and the good life of France.
The Asian intimations did not stop at the walls, they extended inside the walls to the carpark. We had given out satnav the task of taking us to Avignon, we did not specify an address just the city. It took us through the walls via an arched gate straight to a multi-storey car park. No other option other than to be swallowed up by the great whale of a carpark its Jonah swallowing mouth agape, filter feeding on the krill of Renaults and Peugeots. A similar thing happened to me in Japan, though in less excusable circumstances, the place in Japan being an almost deserted hamlet by the sea with a football field sized carpark that the only road took one straight to, like a fly into a web, to be charged $15 for the opportunity to see some macaques monkeys by the sea. The echoes of Japan did not stop there. The Izu peninsula, south-west of Tokyo, was a famed honeymoon vacation destination for hundred of years, pretty much until the value of the yen against the dollar exploded upwards on the back of the Japanese post-war economic miracle and US arm twisting in the face of Japanese imports. The Japanese created the infrastructure for mass tourism on the peninsula, large car parks, large hotels, pointless swan shaped tour boats; all the naffness of new money, and when local mass tourism disappeared like snow in spring from a roof, as Japanese could now afford to travel to Hawaii, or the Aussie Gold Coast, or to Banff in Canada or Prince Edward Island in Canada to chase the romance of Anne of Green Gables, this infrastructure remained in place to decay as the tourists stayed away and nature regained sway. The region is littered with semi-ruined concrete box hotels, while the car parks not requiring much staff or maintenance limp on, diminished in utility and relevance. The car park that we were funnelled into in Avignon had a similar vibe. Built to mass tourism proportions, most likely in the 80ties though at first glance I said 70ties, it is decrepit inside, with toppled bollards and flaking concrete. It was all a little Mad Max-y, a dystopian underground car-park from a present that was broken by the past. Having hardly had to pay for parking since our arrival in France, it was a little painful to pay €1.80/hr, for such an artefact. After struggling to find the exit, unsurprising because the signage had given up the ghost, we found a lift, no less, that dropped us via a staircase right onto the square at the Palais des Papes.
Price du jour
Parking @ Palais Des Papes €1.85/hr