This was the last day of our actual cruise; the following day would be spent traveling home again. We began the day with a tour of Avignon, which I’d visited several years ago with a group of my students; this time, however, the Palais des Papes was open to the public. 🙂
We went through all of the public areas, including the private garden. The chimney in the old kitchen area was immense!
Once we’d seen all we could there and in other areas of the town, we went to a covered market. This was my husband’s favorite, I think; he loves markets! Unfortunately, we didn’t have as much time there as he’d have liked, but we did buy some flavored salts to use for grilling at home.
Many of our fellow travelers spent the afternoon in Avignon also, but we’d signed up for a wine tasting in nearby Châteauneuf du Pape, one of the most renowned wine-producing areas of France. Yay! Here you can see some of the widespread vineyards of the region.
Here is our vintner pouring us samples of one of the three different varieties we tasted. He was very informative, giving us the hows and whys of tasting, as well as explaining the varieties of grapes that go into production of these wines.
While we didn’t buy any wine here, I did come away with a souvenir. 😉 I had wanted a nice corkscrew to use at home, and the type I wanted came as part of a set of wine accessories. There’s the corkscrew, of course, as well as a stopper, a pour spout, and a drip-preventing ring.
After leaving the wine tasting, our group visited the old summer residence of the popes, now in ruins. The location gave us the view of the vineyards I showed you above.
From there we went to Châteauneuf du Pape, a small but very picturesque town.
As luck would have it, this was the weekend that the town was sponsoring a huge tournament — a tournament of boules, or pétanque. You may also know it by its Italian name as bocce ball.
The following day was our return home, a trip that lasted about 24 hours from start to finish. LOL! We were bussed from Avignon to Marseille to catch a flight to Paris. In Paris, we ended up going through passport control and security twice for some unknown reason; at least we were pretty sure that things were very secure! We then flew from Paris to Minneapolis, followed by yet another flight to Las Vegas — home!
What a wonderful couple of weeks we had! But of course it’s always good to be home again. 🙂
