Sur le pont d`Avignon...

Hello from southern France! It`s been a while since the last update - indeed we have stayed in three different places these last four nights - so I better start off where we finished from in our last post.

The three hour bus to Andorra was not too nauseating for either of us and the scenery was nice. The capital itself was as implausible as I remembered it to be - far too much squeezed into a tiny valley - a very unique place. However a surprise awaited us when we went to our hotel - our room stank of cigarette smoke, and when we asked for a no smoking room we were told that no such thing existed in Andorra! You see, Andorra is not part of the EU so is not subject to the anti-smoking rules prevalent across the rest of Europe. As we walked around, we found many people smoking, vending machines everywhere, huge boxes of cigarettes available at cheap prices and smoking products being advertised (which has been banned in the UK for many years). We didn`t spend too much time in our room because of this.

On our full day in Andorra we went to the village of Ordino, which was quite pretty and had loads of museums... we went to the Postal Museum, the only stately home in Andorra, the iconography museum and the museum of miniatures all in the space of 3 hours and all for the cost of €10 total. They were of varying quality but we enjoyed and giggled our way through them :) After that, we went up a cable car for some lovely views of this mountain country. One place we didn`t go to but nonetheless provided us with much amusement was the pin museum - we speculated on what exciting exhibits could be found there and made up lame jokes, eg I can`t quite pin down what is so exciting about the pin museum...

Then it was back to our smelly room for an early night as we had to catch a 5:45 bus the next morning! This was followed by a 40 minute wait for the train station in France, during which we both got VERY cold... eventually though we made it to our next destination, Carcassonne, some 7 hours after leaving Andorra. It`s not that it was a terribly long way away, just that it takes a while to get down from the hills.

Carcassonne is home to a beautifully restored large medieval castle, which dates back mainly to the 12th century, but the place has been inhabited since Roman times. Entry was free for us, because we are aged 25 or under and are EU citizens, yay! We invested in an audio guide which was fun, and took many lovely pictures. The day worked out quite well as we didn`t feel rushed despite the early start but still felt we had done all we wanted to in Carcassonne.

(I have 8 minutes left on the internet now so the rest may seem a bit rushed!)

Unfortunately, after that early start the next day entailed an early-ish start as we got the 7:42 train to Avignon. All went well and we enjoyed a lovely (dopey) day in this historic old walled town. It is home to a famous bridge, built some 800 years ago at a length of over 900m. However only 4 of the original 22 arches remain now but the history was interesting. We also went to the Papal palace - the popes took up residence here for a while in the 13th and 14th centuries (from what we can recall) due to instability in Rome. It`s a big place and quite interesting though I was quite tired!

In less than 2 hours we are off on our high speed TGV train to Paris where we shall be meeting up with a friend from home and spending the following 3 days with her before heading home. Of course the end of a holiday is sad but we are looking forwards to some our creature comforts again.