To avoid catching each other out before noon on April Fool’s Day, we spent as much of the morning as possible sleeping in, having a well-deserved rest after three weeks of constantly being on the go. We didn’t venture out until late morning then took a leisurely stroll, along with most of Avignon (or so it seems) along a different route towards the centre of the Old Town. First we walked through Les Halles Avignon, the vibrant food market where forty vendors offer a wide variety of food and local products all year round. Greengrocers, creamers and cheese makers, bakers and pastry chefs, fishmongers, wine merchants, grocers, caterers offer a large choice of fruits and vegetables, meat and delicatessen, seafood, wines, sweets, regional specialties.
Taking
note of those we would visit on the way home, we continued on to the Place des
Calmes. Here stands the 15th
century Church of Symphorien, the bell tower of Augustinians, the cloister and
the open air Saturday food markets. We
made a number of fresh food purchases, both there and Les Halles, to get us
over the next few days then made our way slowly, via the old Cloister of St
Claire where we paused to savour the surroundings and the silence, for an
afternoon “in”, catching up on washing, ironing and reading. A very relaxing day.
Addendum: Just in case anybody didn’t pick up on it in
yesterday’s blog, although we were underground marvelling at the structures
that were part of the 1st century BCE forum in Arles, everything
that we saw would have been above ground at the time.
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