A day in Avignon
For our second full day in Provence we headed to Avignon, one of the largest cities in the region, and, so I’d heard, the one with the greatest shopping! We parked the car outside the city and walked into the centre, stopping by various photogenic side streets to snap away as we meandered our way to the centre. The city itself has some pretty touristy parts, but mostly it’s still a very calm and beautiful historic centre, with grand buildings, vast stone courtyards, and plenty of viewpoints to catch a glimpse of the Rhône river or the infamous Pont D’Avignon.
Charlie and I made our way up to the gothic Palais Des Papes (Palace of Popes) which is the largest gothic building in the world, and enjoyed meandering through the beautiful gardens, stopping for an outfit photo every now and then! For our day of explorations I opted for flat sandals (these Hermes dupes being amongst my most worn pieces of the entire trip!) and some beautiful (don’t they look like they could be Zimmerman?!) and a lovely striped blouse that I picked up in the Club Monaco sale.
Walking through the streets of Avignon we popped into a few of the boutiques, many of which selling local crafts and stylish fashion pieces including embellished basket bags (if you don’t come home with a basket bag, did you even visit Provence?!) and gorgeous linen summer dresses. I also couldn’t resist popping into a dance store which had an entire wall filled with silk ballet shoes – oh how I would have loved this store as a little girl!
With Charlie’s tummy rumbling we did a quick Instagram search to find a good looking restaurant, and decided upon 83 Vernet which was tucked away in a beautiful courtyard, serving tasty dishes including a Pesto Burrata and fresh tasty salads.
After lunch we headed out of the city and tapped Senanque Abbey into our Google Maps. What I thought would be somewhat of a hidden gem (having again discovered it thanks to an Instagram location search) we were quite surprised to see the narrow lanes chockablock with vehicles and even a tour bus pulled up outside the beautiful Abbey. It seems I’m not the only one who thought this looked like a great stop off point! But none the less we made our way down the dirt track, through the lavender fields to the beautiful Monastery which is nestled in the valleys between two steep hills of the Luberon.
Of course I couldn’t resist getting some beautiful snaps in the lavender fields surrounding the monastery – what you don’t see in these snaps are the crowds of people that we had to dodge in order to get a solitary shot, but trust me – they were there! I opted for my and my favourite for our afternoon of exploring – and the pastel shades worked perfectly against the tones of the lavender fields!
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