Our last visit in Provence was to Avignon, a town known for its bridge.

The campground, on an island in the Rhone, was not only open but had incredible views of the walled city of Avignon and the remains of the famous medieval bridge. 

We walked across the modern bridge over the Rhone to the city and noted that the river was quite high, to the point of flooding.  Police were closing a riverside road.  Quite a change from the River Loire which had all but dried up.

The weather was cold but mainly sunny.  We found the ticket office for the bridge first and bought double tickets for the bridge and for the Palais des Papes (Pope’s Palace).  We decided to tackle the latter first.

The Palais des Papes was huge, with exceedingly large rooms.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_des_Papes) It brought to mind the Prince Bishop’s palace we had visited in Germany, but it is even larger.  We had an electronic guidebook which let you see an image of how each room had been decorated and explained the history of the Papal Residence and its later transitions.  It was certainly not handicap friendly as it involved a lot of steps both up and down! The Avignon Papacy is one of the stranger periods of Christian history. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy

And did we mention that this place is huge? (Click to expand gallery.)

Starving after all that exercise, we headed for the center of town to find food and ended up in a Moroccan restaurant upstairs on the main square.  The the food was delicious and it was nice to be out of a biting wind.

After lunch, we walked back to the Saint Bénézet bridge where we watched two videos about its construction and history. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_Saint-Bénézet) More popularity known as the Pont d’Avignon and, to some of us, at least, it is where you go to dance.

Seriously, everybody knows the folk song, don’t they? What you may not realize is that the original, medieval bridge was actually huge, spanning two branches of the River Rhone.

There is an old Avignonese proverb which states that one cannot cross the bridge of Avignon without encountering two monks, two donkeys, and two whores. Our visit was a bit more tame, perhaps because the ruins of the bridge are so short. But we did take a moment to dance.

After our little dance we retreated to the camper to warm up!

As we headed north the weather continued to deteriorate.  It was December, after all, and it rained a lot! 

Then it was on to Riquewihr in Alsace for a visit to the Christmas Market. Denise had wanted to go to Colmar, but the only campground open was full.  The campground at Riquewihr was lovely and it was an easy bike ride to the market. 

As it was mid week, the shuttle buses to Colmar and Ribeauville were not running, but the market was open and was busy, with at least six tour buses, and lots of campers parked everywhere.  Using the bikes, it was easy to make several visits.

We enjoyed the gluhwein and nibbled on various treats, including fresh roasted chestnuts.

Click on gallery to expand.

We also bought a santon nativity group, as we realized we had failed to buy one in Provence and Denise collects nativity sets.  The lunch we had planned was impossible as all the restaurants were either full or closed by 1:00 PM (!!) – place was heaving! So we returned to the camper.

Having visited our Christmas market, we now began the serious trip to Calais to take the Shuttle back to the UK.  Even the wineries were closing and the remaining aires were filling up, but we made it to Dunkirk. The aire was on a steep hill, right next to a little museum dedicated to Operation Dynamo, the Dunkirk evacuation. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk_evacuation)

From Dunkirk it was off to Calais and one last stop at the Carrefour superstore before heading to a very pleasant campground near Ashford, in Kent (https://www.broadhembury.co.uk), where we were able to clean the camper, do the necessary laundry and prepare it for its storage in Yatton.