Avignon

Ok. Where did I leave off? We took the train from Carcassonne to Avignon and had a nice laid back ride. I was completely surprised by the size of Avignon: it's a large town: the capital of the province of Provence. There are Roman ruins everywhere around here! Its a very hippy, urban city, with people and stores all crowded into the city walls. The streets are cobbled and narrow. The buildings are all stuck together, and everything had to go "up" because it wouldn't fit going "out". We had a tour guide show us around on Saturday since Sean is now off on his cycling adventure. That's the whole reason we are here! Well, it's not the whole reason, but it was the deciding factor:) Our tour guide was absolutely amazing. We went to a city called Orange. In addition to an incredible Roman arch, they have the largest Roman outdoor theater in Europe. It's enormous and there is an archeological excavation site of a temple right next to it. The acoustics are so good in this theater, that every summer, symphonies come from all over the world for an outdoor classical musical festival! NO MICROPHONES are needed or used. Then we went to a site where the pope had his summer home. The castle is in ruins and only one room is still intact, but the views were amazing and what was left of Chateaux de Neuf Pape was still amazing. We went to a wine cave and saw how they make wine and how they store it. Then we did a wine tasting and I learned a lot about bouquets:) I am a bigger wine snob now than before! Our tour guide said something so wonderful in regards to wine tasting. He said "You drink to forget, but you taste to remember". Most people taste and spit out the wine without really drinking the wine. (I let Leonardo do this, heads up, he can't wait to blog about that). After wine tasting, we went for a lovely lunch, and then brought the kids to an outdoor inflatable park. Then we went to another castle, chateaux Baux. Amazing pictures, reminded me of Carcassonne. It's not intact, but it's enough to be awe inspiring. We went to an olive oil tasting, and all of the kids loved that.
We had dinner at the St. Pierre cloister, just staring at the facade of St. Pierre. I couldn't wait to go to mass there on Sunday. I was not disappointed. I took dozens of pictures and hope to post soon.

One of the cool things about France is how much fruit and produce they grow here. We have seen: grapevines, cherry trees, apple trees, pear trees, kiwi plants, olive trees, sunflowers, lavender, ( both dead and out of season) dill, figs, tomatoes, lettuces, and lots of wild fennel that grows everywhere, and people use it. There is so much fresh stuff here. French olive oil is delicious too!

We had a rough night with the babies. Jasper was up four hours with a stomach ache. AUGH! But we pushed through our morning and made it to mass at St. Pierre. St. Pierre is a beautiful gothic church. The mass was half sung Latin, half French. Luckily, they have out cheat sheets with all of the Latin responses.

OMG. I have got to go to bed. Tomorrow is Sean's big race day! I have to get up at 6 am:(