irannostalgia.com

I was recently in the South France city of Avignon in the region of Provence. It was recommended by an Italian coworker of mine and I must say that it lived up to the hype.

At the below link you can see the pictures I took during the trip:

http://dariotravelweb3.googlepages.com/travelavignonindex.html

At this other link you can watch the youTube video I made of the trip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0y1pDXczKE

Avignon is about a 2 hours train ride from Marseille. The touristic part of Avignon is delimited by a wide river called " Le Rhoné " and then by a medieval fortress. Apparently two popes lived there so the main attraction is a papal castle. It also has a famous bridge called Le Pont Saint Benezet. It stops in the middle of the river. Apparently it would break each time the river would flood, so eventually they gave up on rebuilding it.

The town itself is really cute. With medieval stone streets, lots of little stores with cute store fronts. Lots of outdoor cafes and few cars allowed inside the fortress area making it a pleasant and enjoyable walk.

The bumpy part of the trip was that I had no hotel, or better said pension reservation. This is because the trip was put together last minute and I was working away from home. The plain arrived in Marseille at 9pm which meant that I reached Avignon by train at 12:30 AM. Well, I started walking around town looking for an affordable room, since I can't afford regular french hotel prices of over 100 Euros per night. But no luck. Apparently the pension receptions close at 8pm sharp and all of them had a "No vacancy" sign on the door. I have slept in airports and train stations before, but in France and Italy they close the train stations between 2 AM and 4 AM. I kept myself bussy walking around. I would tell you about it but it would be a little too adult rated for iranian.com :) . But eventually I was getting tired and I had to lay down somewhere. Yes! I did it. There was a very wide comfi phone booth and I fell a sleep for two hours until it was just too cold. Luckily by then it was 4:30 AM and the train station had opened!!

Despite all this, I enjoyed the next day walking around Avignon.

http://dariotravelweb3.googlepages.com/travelavignonindex.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0y1pDXczKE

P.S. Regarding the new iranian.com article submission system, It would be great if we could upload pictures to our articles ourselves instead of having to email them separately and then never hearing back.

! Salut !

Irannostalgia.com

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