With a 10AM start on day five we were in good shape to hit the road, albeit less than thrilled for a six-hour drive. As our Contiki tour guide Angie so eloquently put it though, we had the option of “walking, jogging or taking the bus.” We chose the bus.
Frowns were turned upside down with the announcement that we were watching Woody Allen’s modern masterpiece, Vicky, Christina, Barcelona. With the perfect mix of crazy Catalanian contradictions, the hours on the bus quickly passed and we eventually arrived at the happiest bus stop of all time. Parched and desperate for Kinder (FYI, the best line of candy an American girl could dream of) we charged at the rest stop at the same pace Windsor and I assumed last year when entering a Tory Burch sample sale.
While Windsor reveled in the HC approved pink walls of the bathroom, Brittany and I were stoked to see not only soap and toilet paper (note, often rare in Europe) but Dyson hand dryers to boot. Classy. Even classier, cappuccino vending machines with a palatable plethora of artificial awesomness including Apple Pie, Cookie, and Almond. Caffeinated and generally stoked about France, we got back on the bus and began really looking forward to Avignon.
As Angie explained, Avignon is the home of the lesser-known Papal Palace. Avignon was home to popes and their respective posses for nearly seven decades back in the 14th century. Particularly interesting in today’s increasingly secular society, it was because of the church’s relocation that Avignon came to be developed. As was customary at the time, devout merchants, nobles, and craftsmen followed the papacy and together built a Papal Palace within the incredible medieval town that metaphorically and physically was built around the pope. Unfortunately, we could not tour the Papal Palace because it was closing for the evening, but Angie gave us a history nugget with the unbelievable fact that when seized by Napoleon’s army, the Papal Palace was used for living quarters, makeshift prisons, and even horse stables.
With the Papal Palace unavailable as an option for our free time, we made due by shopping. #totalhercampusmove.
Walking around the gleaming, narrow ivory stone roads, we popped from shop to shop enjoying a perfect mix of small local chains and quirky boutiques. Fueled on crepes and Orangina we were able to collectively pick up snake-suede booties, on-trend bow rings and bangles, and all the fixings for a proper Her Campus picnic- brie, chevre, framboise jam, tapenade, fresh baguettes (enter judgement here), and Chablis–an uber fancy code name for unoaked Chardonnay.
Shopped out and pumped about our HC approved bed buffet, we headed back to the hotel. Since Avignon is outside of a major metropolitan area, it was particularly modern and a nice upgrade from the older hotels you often find in large European cities. After dropping our bags we set the bed for dinner, true story, and dug in. With the BBC in the background to really set the mood, we sampled our platter-o-Provence and were able to unwind from another ‘jam’ packed day. Sorry, I had to do it.
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