Volcanic cloud makes for quiet streets in Avignon

Quieter-than-usual spring season in Avignon : the no-fly zone extended over Europe, and more importantly, the long TGV (superfast trains linking the city to Paris and beyond London and Amsterdam) strike, all but isolated Avignon last week.

 I could not resist  publising this 1947 Times article, from the 1947 April 14 issue, Atlantic Oversea edition,  page 24, found in an old copy sold for 20 centimes at a  " Brocante" ( second-hand goods market) today, in Bonpas, near Avignon. Isn't it beautiful  in its sobriety and precision? Seems that nowadays the main danger from  eruptions is the information  flood...
Not all airports where closed, and I fetched my wife last week from Lyons' St Exupery airport, very convenient. Makes sense to rent a car there and watch the vegetation go greener the more you travel south down the Rhone Valley - if you have a flight from this small but cosy airline hub. Two hours by expressway, or you could stop en route in places like Pont St Esprit ( for the ancient bridge), or Grignan (for the castle)...

Cubicula locanda

That's latin for " Rooms to let".  I don't now how that title will rate with the search engines such as google or yahoo, but indeed we have nice rooms to let in the city of the Popes, a mediaeval wonder in the midst of Provence. If you comme at all to Avignon, you should stay right in the gothic-era city center of this former world capital.  You will undoubtely enjoy the visit of the Pope's palace, but also the walks in the pedestrian shopping area nearby,  the museums, churches, restaurants, open-air markets...

We have at home a small english language library from which you  will be welcome to borrow. (Links between Avignon and english-speaking writers as diverse as Henry Rider Haggard ( Remember the Red Eve and Murgh the Messenger ?),  Lawrence Durrell - the Quintette d’Avignon ... are numerous and often amusing. ) There is also a friendly english bookshop on rue Carreterie, not far from our place, which doubles up as a tea-romm most afternoons.

 Below are a few photographs of the  second floor rooms and the first floor studio with mezzanine...  (a work in progress, will be ready by end of April ...) designed to accomodate four people under a spectacular beamed ceiling.  Contact us  for bookings  : catamaran@ymail.com and please note that we are already fully booked in july.