The southie bit of France

We got onto Avignon pretty late after getting off the worst piece of public transport we’d ever been on, seven hours of bus hell from Geneva to Avignon. It wasn’t the bus that was so bad but the people and drivers on it. The bus terminated in Barcelona and so was full of Spanish people who I can only compare to bogan chavs. Constant noise, playing their own music, smoking and just being plain rude. We were more that pleased to get off.

So not being in the best mood the next day we tried to be touristy and stuff, we even went to the big castle that was built by the popes when they lived here after fleeing Rome. But alas we were just not in the mood and retired to our room to read and watch stuff on our laptop.

Carnival!! Well one merry-go-round.

I’m starting to believe that there are a lot of cathedrals around in Europe.

We’d only had the two nights, one off the bus and one after a fairly apathetic day. So to prove that we had actually been to Avignon we went for a walk around the oldie part before picking up the rental car that we had for the next 5 days.

The bridge to nowhere

We’d had a few talks with the Fromont’s (Family we stayed with in Jura) as to where good place’s to go in the South of France would be. We weren’t to taken with the whole Monte Carlo, Nice, Mediterranean thing so they suggested some small towns that would take us inland on our way down to Spain.

Les Baux de Provnce, very very nice little town, old winding streets and stuff

danger

More danger

We didn’t stay in Les Baux but decided to just keep driving west until we found somewhere nice. This took us through Nimes which totally turned us around and ate up heaps of time as we were caught in the home rush traffic. We only lasted on more town after Nimes, Sommieres where we found a camping ground and chalet with our name on it.

The next few days the weather started to pack in a bit, but not to worry as one of the main attractions around the area is a network of caves. For some reason everything we do on trip seems to be either for old people, tour groups or kids, where are all the people our age?

After Sommieres, we headed onto Carcassone, well actually to Malvies, 30km away from Carcassone where we had booked an apartment style place attached to the main estate building of an English couple who live and work in the area. Nice as accommodation with full kitchen and open fire.

Driving in Languedoc-Roussillon

The things we did over the 3 days were,

- Driving back into Carcassone to have a walk around, (although after nearly 2 months of travel we were a bit sick of old towns).

Carcassone in the distance

- Hiring bikes from the English couple and going round the different small towns in the area

Hmmm, Rachel taking an interesting path

Rachel deciding against the interesting path

- But the best thing was definitely taking a quick walk from the estate to a local winery which the English people knew and getting a private tour of the facilities, we were shown round by the owner who was only a little bit older than us. He took us down to the vats where some of the virgin wine was still being made and aged and we drank straight from the tap, mmmm. We ended up buying 3 bottles from him of which we are gonna save 2 of for xmas.

Where's waldo, Rachel riding into the distance