France, Avignon: l'on y danse!

Avignon was a planned 2 hr layover, enough time to pop into the town, saunter within and throughout its ramparts (I think that means its surrounding walls?), past the huge castle of Palais des Papes, and say hello to the bridge of one of my childhood nursery rhymes. On my way there, the streets were buzzing, flyers were posted everywhere, people were doing magic / shows / music in the streets. The town was literally buzzing.

So I stop by the famous Pont St-Benezet where I danced 'sous' instead of 'sur' because then it was gratuit.




And then found out that, in fact, that the buzzing was coming from the 'festival d'Avignon' and its more experimental & cheaper 'festival Off'. The former being the largest European theatre festival?and the latter having, itself, over 1000 productions. Yowza.

So unfortunately for plans to see Montpellier, but fortunately for fun & friends & culture, I met two boys from Montreal, with whom
I sauntered around town checking out shows and show times, ate a picnic lunch with in the rain, and finally, went to see 'Amadeus' - advertised as the shorter than normal recount of Mozart's death.

All in all, not the best performance. The character of Mozart was quite well played, but not that of any of the other characters. Oh well, between visiting Salzburg and this I covered a decent amount of Mozart. It sent a little 'i was there' excitement up my spine, however, when Vienna was, albeit briefly, described in the play, so that was cool. And I managed to follow along with the French for the most part...

It only took us about half an hour to do a ten minute walk back to the train station, stopping several times along the way to watch street performances, hear about other shows, get ice cream... And I would finish my 'layover' about 8 hours later, dropping the boys off at a comedy as I ran at tres grand vitesse myself in order to catch the shuttle bus and my TGV train to Montpellier.