Nine weeks!
So we’d performed a bit of a “left turn Clyde” to get to Avignon and away from the direct route home via Switzerland.
We’d visited Avignon last year in August but wilted in the sun and didn’t do any of the sights or town. This detour now, in October, was therefore intended to allow us to do all of that but without the sweltering heat. But it was a big detour to get here, probably around 500km out from the direct route from Italy to home through Switzerland.
We over-did the lack of sun though and managed to get here on not only a cool day, but a rainy day too. It rained over night and tried to rain in the morning and a little in the afternoon. Yesterday was sunny. Tomorrow will be sunny.
Hey ho! You play the cards you’re dealt. We’re not going to kick around here for another 24 hours just to get a sunny day.
So we headed off into the city first thing on the bikes. It’s was a 10 minute ride into town where we left the bikes locked up at the end of Place de l’Horloge.
It’s worth pointing out that much of the town’s shops were shut. We’re struggling to keep up with which country does what in regard to Sunday trading. Italy seemed to be totally open, France perhaps not so!
We then headed up to the Palais des Papes for our allotted 10 o’clock entrance – we got there about 9:40 and had no trouble getting in.
We’d hoped to get a guided tour when we booked last night, but there were none available, even though there were dozens of tours walking the site.
From what we learnt today, this is a potted history of the palace – it may not be accurate!
The Palais des Papes is a 13th C. palace constructed by a pope who had visited Avignon and decided it would be a better place to have the Pope’s residence than Rome. There were then 9 popes that called the palace their official residence. However, it seems the Vatican wasn’t on board with this and a parallel Pope line was initiated in Rome – with lots of contention over the years as to which Pope was the real one. At the end of the 14thC the Avignon papacy was ended and the buildings were taken over by the military. We’re not totally sure if they used the buildings from then until it becoming a museum… that needs some research, and the guide we asked didn’t know. Apparently a lot of the building was “vandalised” by the military.
The default way to experience the Palis des Papes is to use an Android based augmented reality experience. I would guess the tablets were about 8 or 9 inch devices.
This experience was poor. Sue was huffing and puffing about it all the way around.
The tech mostly worked, and was based on a set of QR codes in some of the rooms and probably some sort of NFC location system in other rooms. That side of things worked ok, but the inertial sensors in the tablets got a bit confused and to unconfuse them you had to rescan the QR codes to get the room to realign with the augmented screen view.
There were hotspots on the screens to learn more and the initial access to each room had an overview.
The problem was that the UI was very difficult to navigate and you kept getting lost between scanning codes, the map and the content screens.
It nearly worked.
What didn’t work was the content. It was fine for what it was, but had nowhere near enough information. Especially in terms of an overview of the history of the place. We could have done with a lot more detail.
It felt like the content had been designed for a casual visitor and children – not a history geek. I can understand that, but the lack of context was frustrating and the lack of a “more info” also.
It was also frustrating that a lot of the signage around the place did seem to have more detail but we struggled to access it because it was only in French. We tried using a translation app to read it but that became a chore and we gave up.
You’d think that one of the main aims of a translated audio-visual guide system would be to replicate the physical signage so a non-French speaking visitor can access the same information available on the physical boards. But non! And I guess the reason for that is that the people designing the system weren’t thinking of non-French speakers, they were trying to enhance the French experience and other languages were an afterthought. That sounds like a big mistake given the international pull of the site.
We did bump into a really helpful guide. She’d jacked in being a teacher and had been a guide for a week. But she was very helpful.
But anyway, the architecture IS amazing and so here’s a few pictures…
As we were leaving to head through the gift shop (you always have to leave through the gift shop) we found an Italian guy’s wallet on the floor by the toilets and handed it to the guide we’d been speaking to earlier. Hopefully he gets it back!
All in all we were very disappointed by the AV guide system and by extension the whole Palais experience. They could have made so much more of the history, the politics and the reasons behind stuff. They could also do with a “getting started” system on the AR tablet, so you’re taught how to use it before you end up throwing it at a wall. Some usability testing might not have gone amiss there too!
We spent about 2 hours (and a 500km detour to get here) at the Palais.
The Pont d’Avignon experience was so much better.
After the Palais we had a wander but then decided to make a bee-line to the cafe our friendly Palais guide had recommended in Place Saint Didier – Grande Cafe Barretta. The hot chocolates were good, Sue had a bop to the music and the waiter was really friendly – highly recommended.
After a couple of rounds of drinks we set out on the rest of the GPSmyCity tour.
We found the Halles Market…
And we bought a couple of bottles of wine from a stall outside the market…
After the water wheels we sort of headed in the general direction of the bridge – Pont d’Avignon.
We’d bought tickets to the Palais and the bridge on the internet the night before. So we just presented our QR codes and went and got an audio guide.
Unlike a lot of audio guides, this one was really good. Lots of stuff about the history and about how they constructed the bridge. There was even an exhibition in the basement area that covered how they’d uncovered the history (LIDAR etc) and the subsequent theories about where the bridge went and what happened to it. We really enjoyed the bridge tour and spent about an hour there.
The various incarnations of bridge date back to the late 1100’s and stretched for about 1km over the Rhone. Today there’s an island in the middle of the river (that our campsite is on) but when the bridge was first built the island was broken where the bridge and our campsite is located. Hence the need for a 1km bridge.
The downfall of the bridge was the mini-iceage in the Middle Ages, it wasn’t designed to cope with the increased water flows and so was washed away too many times and abandoned.
Some Bridge piccies…
At this point we were about done for the day. It was getting on for 4 and we’d been out for about 7 hours again.
So, we wound our way back to our bikes, I bought a T-shirt and we headed back to the campsite.
On the way Sue spotted a big red Avignon sign, ripe for a photo-op we couldn’t refuse…
And that was us done for the day.
We’re still not sure how many hops we’re going to try and get home in. We’re flipping back to the idea of doing one more night and therefore two hops. But we’re going to head out early tomorrow and see how far up France we can get tomorrow.
Harry has just watched Snapes memories in the Pensieve and is about to go into the woods to have Voldemort.
Finally a note on mobile data usage. My roaming allowance resets on the 7th of each month and I have a 50GB monthly roaming cap (the max that I’ve been told EE will allow). So we’ve been careful with data usage as we’d be knackered if we ran out. So siting here on October 6th with one day to a reset, we’ve used 40GB of our 50. And that’s also with a lot of sites providing good internet over WiFi AND 11 days on Corfu with good internet in our lodgings. Seeing as the mobile usage has been going well, I’ve not been as careful as I could have been while we’ve been out and about or driving. And of course Sue’s phone has been dead for 3 weeks of the month too – so we’ve had both of us hammering it. But as a yard stick, 50GB is do-able but you’ve got to be careful. BTW… that’s with minimal video streaming during the month, but lots of Apple Maps and me doing these blogs by mobile data for the past couple of weeks.
Leave a Comment