This blog post is about my 3rd and 4th day in France with a school trip I took with my students over spring break. We spend two days in Paris, which you can read about here (day one and day two).
Easter, April 1st 2018, also April Fool’s Day but today was no joke. We woke up and after breakfast we boarded a bus to head to the Gare de Lyon. It was fun to be at this train station because this is the station that I teach about so much when I’m doing the train unit, particularly ‘Le Train Bleu’ the restaurant in the train station with the beautiful ceilings. This restaurant (which I’ve never had the pleasure of eating at) was created for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, and each dining room is themed for a different region or city of France with 41 different paintings by 41 different artists. I took several students upstairs and went in and asked if they minded if we took pictures, and they were very sweet. Then we had about an hour to grab snacks or souvenirs so I had to browse the book store with one of my students (and hopefully future French teacher) to stock up on some children’s books. Then I had to grab a few French 2 students to they could “composter le billet”, stamping their ticket which is essential before getting on the train. Then we were able to board early onto the TGV, lugging our luggage up the steps and finding our seats for the 2.5 hour train ride into the Provence region. Most people took some naps, I was enjoying the scenery flowing by outside and planning some of our next steps with our tour guide Sophie. We arrived in Provence and met our bus driver for the next few days, Miguel.
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| Le Train Bleu restaurant |
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| make sure to ‘composter votre billet’ |
Into Avignon we went; I was a little nervous about this part of the tour, since I had Spanish students with me who had probably never heard of Provence, even my students were thinking Provence was the name of the town and not the region (there’s never enough time to teach all the culture), but from the ooh’s and ahh’s I was hearing from the students I knew they were liking this small quaint town. We parked the bus and checked out the Pont d’Avignon, the bridge that doesn’t span the river, taking a few minutes to take in the smells of the lavender that was growing.
Avignon is an important historical town, from 1309 until 1377 this is actually where the popes lived, before Vatican city. The town remained under papal control until 1791 when, because of the French Revolution, it became part of France. Besides the Palais des Papes (palace of Popes), the town is also known for the Pont D’Avignon, the famous bridge that doesn’t span the Rhone river. The original bridge was built between 1177 and 1185 but was destroyed 40 years later when king Louis VIII laid siege on the town. It was rebuilt with 22 stone arches that collapsed several times during flooding, and because this was so costly to repair it was eventually abandoned. The four remaining arches are thought to have been built around 1345. The city also still has it’s original ramparts, I love a walled city!
We were given two hours of free time to check out the town, grab lunch or shop for souvenirs. It was a great town for just roaming the windy streets, admiring the charm of the architecture. I spent my time walking around and exploring, popping into a little church next to the Palais de Papes, and walking up the hill to check out the scenery from up above.
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| Celene and I in Avignon |
After a few hours of wondering and enjoying the much slower-pace compared to the bustle of Paris that we dealt with the last few days we regrouped and everyone was all-smiles, exclaiming how much they loved the town. But Sophie had a good plan up her sleeve, she wanted to take us off-itinerary and travel to the town of Uzès, a city I had never been to. It was about an hour by bus and we were traveling on this cute roads lined with white sycamore trees that we were told were planted by Napoleon who envisioned a France with trees lining every street so his armies could march the streets with pride. We also were driving by loads of vines used by the wineries in the area and the asparagus plants were also starting to sprout.
We arrived in Uzès, a very ancient town, the aquaduct that we were going to be visiting the proceeding day was built to connect this town with Nîmes in the first century BC. Here we wandered the stone-paved streets, taking it all the quaint buildings, we were loving the colorful shutters and stone building. We ended our wander in the town square, which was having an arts market, and were given 30 minutes to wander and do some shopping.
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| How cute is this place? “Studio of the Bears” |
Back on the bus we headed to our next hotel, this time staying at a chain hotel called Ibis outside of Nîmes. The roads were very windy and I started feeling motion-sick, and as soon as we arrived I ran to the bathroom and got sick- the joys of traveling in back towns with loads of road-abouts in France! We checked in, with Celene being my roommate in this hotel, and then walked next door to the Buffalo restaurant (a chain here in France) where the 5 vegetarians enjoyed a nice salad and the rest of the group ate…something I don’t remember lol. But we also had fruit for dessert, and though the kids enjoyed the meal they left hungry, so a group wanted to walk to a MacDo that we passed on the bus, so after dinner I went with a group of about 13 to the McDonalds. After we got back we had bed checks, we need some good sleep before spending our second day in Provence!
