Visiting the Popes Palace

September 12th

To visit the Palais du Papes you need a ticket of course and it costs 12 Euros each.  We purchased our tickets online which meant we didn't have to stand in line to buy ours.  I thought we may have made a mistake going at 10am when the Palace opens because scads of tour groups were arriving at the same time but the place is so large that once you get inside it handles people fairly well.  I'm sure in the peak summer months it would be a different scene.  The palace rooms are mostly immense but it still gets quite warm and there isn't much ventilation other than the doors that are open to the outside.  The Palais des Papes is a Unesco World Heritage Site and it is the largest medieval Gothic building in Europe. Once it was a fortress as well as a palace and the papal residence.  It was a seat of western Christianity during the 14th century.  I could only take photos in the rooms without frescos which is probably a good thing since I took plenty inside and out. Somehow I managed to get photos without strangers in most of the rooms.

Beautiful tiles of which 

replicas are for sale in the 

gift shop

We had to have ice cream after our tour

Since we had no reservations for dinner we decided to start at the local Irish Pub, O'Connels.  While we were having our beer, a two-man band was setting up and would start playing soon so

we stayed to listen and ordered the very popular pub dinner of fish n' chips.  I can't decide if I liked the band or the food better...they were both excellent!  Just as the band was about to take a break a horde of birds started flying overhead making extremely loud screeches.  This lasted for nearly the entire band break and no-one seemed to know what set them off.  We were

leaving in the morning so we headed back to finalize our packing before the birds came back because we weren't covered overhead by an umbrella.