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Gordon and I hopped a train from Paris to our next stop, Avignon. Avignon is a little town in the south of france that we picked because the guidebook said it was "picturesque" and we wanted a taste of the south of france. We showed up at our hotel and the rooms weren't ready yet, so we just dropped our bags off and wandered through the town.
We toured the Palace des Papes, which is where some of the popes lived for a time (I am forgetting why they left Rome). It was basically just the building left, none of the furnishings were there. We then napped in the gardens near the Palace and probably shocked the townspeople when I napped on top of Gordon. But there were bugs on the ground!
That night we had one of our best dinners on the trip - a little restaurant called L'Epice and Love that was recommended to us. Our waitress was Ukranian (studying English) and drew us pictures of the menu items since we didn't understand the all-French menu! I ended up with a stuffed pork dish that was absolutely amazing, and Gordon and I shared a bottle of wine. Great start to the south of france!
On our second day, we decided to take a day trip to Marseille and hopped the train for a quick ride down to the coast. The weather was absolutely beautiful but of course neither Gordon nor I had brought bathing suits on the trip because we figured it would be too cold for the beach! We stopped at the first beach we saw in Marseille (we walked to the left of the port), which had some volleyball games going. We quickly realized we had stopped at a topless beach (I think all of France is) ... hopefully Gordon didn't pay too much attention to the topless women! (he assured me they were all "old" anyways). After enjoying the beach and sun we trained back to Avignon and had tartine for dinner. We learned that tartine is basically a piece of toast with stuff on top (we got mozzarella and basil I think). Yum!
By our third day in Avignon, we were pretty done with the town. It is a tiny place, and we had explored the entire town after the first day. So we took the second day as a relaxation opportunity. That morning, we bought supplies at the grocery store and walked across the bridge to a little island near Avignon, where we spent the day sunning ourselves near the river. I had bought some Kinder eggs at the grocery store to show Gordon - my Dad always used to bring them back from Europe on his business trips when we were kids. One of the eggs had a toy stamp that said "Ciao!" ... which we had great fun in stamping all over each other.
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