CEBToD: Day 5 -- Narbonne to Avignon

So... where did I leave off. This morning we packed up and headed out of town, but not until we'd picked up some water and snacks, and grabbed some bread and cafe in the town square. The plan was to bike up north to Montpelier via Beziers. This would have been about 50 miles or so. Instead, we did about 22. =P

Basically, we decided we wanted to go to Avignon instead of Montpelier. But that was too far to bike. So we figured we would bike to Montpelier, look around, then take a train up to Avignon to stay there for the night. The biking to Beziers was relatively incident-free... I don't remember if I mentioned that my front fork has been incredibly stiff. Stiff to the point that I can't really turn very well, including those little micro-adjustments you make when you're just driving around. So instead of micro-adjustments, I do like these big macro-adjustments and basically look like I'm drunk. The problem is especially pronounced going downhill... I end up careening around, which is pretty scary when there's no shoulder, the road's wet, and you're hitting 20-30 mph. I really need to do something about that damned fork.

Anyways, Beziers is a city perched on top of this big-ass hill. The gare (train station) is at the bottom, more or less, but all the cool stuff is up top. So we biked up through the streets to the top (wheeee more hills) and saw the town, including the kirche-complex (kirche's deutsch for church). It's a cute town, for sure. But we'd decided to just train to Avignon from Beziers and be done with biking for the day. =P So we cut our visit short, bought some snacks for the train (including olives from a halal vendor; they were in giant tubs and we just poured them in plastic grocery bags and tied them off).

The train to Avignon... wow. It was a crappy regional train, so there was like zero room for our bikes. We had to put them in the end of the train next to the engine, in that little space you walk through to cross to a new car, where there's typically a tiny bathroom or closet next to it. The train wasn't too packed initially... but in Montpelier, we picked up roughly 15107510289 people and everyone was packed in like sardines. Our poor bikes... they basically half-blocked that entrance area and people were squeezing past them with giant-ass luggage, and we were really worried the bikes would get trashed by careless train-goers. We couldn't even watch them from our seats because we got trapped by random train-goers who say next to us (damn them!) and clogged up the aisles. But we dropped most people before Avignon, so that by the time we got there, we were able to de-train easily, and found our bikes intact and nothing stolen. Yay!

I just have to add a little anecdote here about this guy who sat next to us during the super-packed moment. He started picking his nose. Now, this isn't something you'd normally do in a packed train, but he'd been snuffling something fierce, so you could tell he had something up there that was bugging him. But I don't know that I could ever convey the trauma of exactly what he was doing. He had a big schnoz. So big that he could disappear a finger up there to the knuckle. And so he did. And he kept digging, and digging, and digging... you could see his finger moving around underneath the skin up by his fucking eyeball!!!! And I swear to god he did it the entire 25-30 minutes he was on the train. I know that sounds like exaggeration, but you can ask Dan... the guy was sitting next to me, but was facing Dan. So Dan had to watch it the entiiiire time. It was insane. He even dug something out at one point and wiped it on the side of his chair next to me. Barf. OK, I seriously have to stop talking about this or Ill bring up breakfast.

So Avignon... in a word: beautiful. It's definitely giving Girona a run for the money for top slot. We found a great hotel down a random side street... it had a tower staircase that was pretty precarious... and we were on the top floor, in this cute pink room. =P We cleaned up, and poked around town. I made Dan walk to the main square to see the Papal Palace (there used to be some Popes in Avignon during some sort of melodramatic catholic schism around 1400). We did a foot tour of the city... it's one of those places you just have to see. It's walled, and old... has narrow, winding streets... basically a stereotypical old-school European city (per my stereotypes anyways). We grabbed some coffee and ice cream in the Place d'horologes, and eventually went to bed.