Nov 2-5, 2008 – Avignon, France – "A Good Year" tour

Those that know our family know there was a movie starring Russell Crowe and produced by Ridley Scott called “A Good Year” that we’ve watched a number of times (and inflicted on our guests a number of times also.  They movie is loosely based on Peter Mayle’s novel, A Year in Provence.  It turns out Ridley Scott and Peter Mayle are neighbors in Provence and collaborated in the making of this movie which does a great job of showing the Provence countryside and hill towns in all their glory.

I found a web site that described the Provence towns where scenes of the movie were set and we made a tour to visit these settings.

For the movie this square was transformed into an outdoor cafe run by the film’s female lead. These dogs would periodically look up in amusement at those passing by.  It’s located in the city of Gordes.

This is a beautiful view of the city of Gordes we took as we were leaving town.

This square was the setting of a scene in which Russell Crowe made a few laps of the monument in the middle of the square in his Smart car (how European!).

The photo below was taken just outside the city of Bonneux (I’ll check on the spelling) and is the sign of the winery that Russell Crowe inherits in the movie.  For the movie it was changed from Chateau de Canorgue to Chateau Le Siroque and was at the head of two driveways; one private which lead to the winery owner’s house and the other to the tasting room of the winery.

 

This is the view from the wine tasting building (we bought a couple of bottles of wine which were very nice) to the main house which was one of the movie settings that staged a number of scenes.

  

In the movie, Russell Crowe zoomed back and forth along this driveway on a Harley Davidson he inherited from his uncle.

 

The is the view of the front garden looking out to the Luberon Valley beyond and was a vista featured many times in the movie.

 

Finally, Russell Crowe rides on the Harley Davidson to a date with the female lead that takes place at this public pool in the village of Cucuron.  In the movie, this pool was transformed into an outdoor concert venue, the performance of which was interrupted by a downpour.

 

Nov 2-5, 2008 – Avignon, France – Around Avignon

One of our Avignon days was rainy so we decided to not stray to far into the countryside and took a break in the weather to walk around the city of Avignon.

One revelation of our walk that day was that Roman Catholic popes had not always resided in Vatican city in Rome.  There was a period when they decamped to Avignon; possibly because the political climate was not conducive in Rome or another reason.  For whatever reason, they built some significant structures in Avignon to house their operations.  This one is the Palais des Papes.

This ‘bridge to nowhere’ had apparently been built and rebuilt several times but finally enough was enough and one time it was not rebuilt.  I’ll try to update this post with information about events that led to its current condition.

As I do when I’m home, I look in real estate offices to see the prices of residences.  In Avignon, I saw pictures (and prices) of some country homes.  Prices of these ones were in the 1.3 million Euro range.  At about 1 Euro = 1.6 $Cdn, I got the idea that real estate in Europe was priced similar to North America – maybe moreso.

Allister doing the decent thing and trying to put a maple leaf over the private parts of this sculpture.

 

Maybe this was a green project or maybe they just did this because they could but this was a wall of vegetation growing on the outside of the building that housed Avignon’s public market (Les Halles).

Nov 2-5, 2008 – Avignon, France – Orange, alligators, and turtles

Another stop on the antiquities part of our tour was the city of Orange which has a theatre built by the Romans that is still in use today.

A picture of some of the seating area and new stage and acoustic roof over the stage.   The audio guides that described the site told us that there was a strict seating protocol, based on social status, that determined how close to the stage you could sit but also pointed out that the shows held here were free to any citizen of the town.

Allister with his audio guide.   These are available at many of the European museum sites and generally provided good information and value about the site.

As with other things the Romans did, the scale of the theatre was significant.

 

 

We just had to take this picture of this little van as we headed out of Orange.

One of our guide books talked about a small city near Orange that had an alligator and turtle farm.  It seemed unlikely and I was initially skeptical, but once we saw it, we were pleasantly surprised to find it was more of an alligator and turtle breeding program than ‘farm’.  Inside a set of large, temperature controlled, greenhouses we found over 350 alligators of >5 species and probably 30-50 large turtles.

This photo shows some of the small alligators in separate tanks that were part of the breeding program.  We also saw turtle eggs in an incubator nearby and descriptions of breeding program success with other zoos and farms.

Nov 2-5, 2008 – Avignon, France – Pont du Gard

The Romans had built an aqueduct that stretched from the mountains to the city of Nimes to provide it with fresh water.  As we were to learn, this was a significant project requiring development of many political, economic, and construction capabilities to conceive and complete.

For perspective, the Pont Du Gard, pictured below, was a bridge over a river valley that was built as part of the construction of the aqueduct but the site and museum at Pont du Gard used the ancient aqueduct as a starting point to describe the development of Roman cities, with particular emphasis on their advanced use of water as a foundation element of civic development.

 

The people in this photo help convey a sense of the scale of construction.

 

There had been rains the previous few days and the river was churned up and quite high (we saw pictures where only the center arch had water flowing through it) with tree trunks washed up on sandbars.

 

Just one of the examples of how the Romans used the water in their cities.  These were public toilets.  Believe me, there were times on our trip where we had wished for more evidence of Roman engineering as we toured European cities.

This map positions Pont du Gard as part of the overall development of the Nimes aqueduct.

The museum included this exhibit that showed how the Romans built their arches.  Once the ‘key’ stone at the top of the arch was in place, the brace was removed.