Europe, Episode 6: The bridge at the end of Avignon

While I was ambivalent about Paris, I fell in love with Avignon pretty quickly.  I'll get to the cobbled streets and friendly people later on.  First, I thought I'd write about one of my favourite moments - when we discovered the famous bridge of Avignon.

Pont Saint-Bénézet isn't even technically a bridge anymore; it's been ruined and reconstructed several times since the 12th Century and only boasts four remaining arches now.  It does, however, make for cracking pictures in the sunset.

We spent the afternoon strolling through the old city with the aim of reaching the bridge by sunset, not realising that said sunset would be a couple of hours long.  Rebecca and I ended up parking ourselves in the long grass till ten at night.

Before I went on this trip, a colleague pulled me aside and asked me if I'd ever gone travelling with Bear before.  When I said no, she shook her head in wonder.  "You're very brave.  What if you end up falling out?"  To be honest, the closer we got to the trip, the more this thought had crossed my mind.  After all, while we "knew" each other from work, we didn't exactly know each other and we would be spending no less than thirty days, together twenty-four seven.

When you're with someone as chilled as Bear, though, travelling is far easier than it might be with someone else.  During the planning stages of the trip, we listed our desired activities and only three things made the list: photography (her), obssessive journalling (me) and coffee drinking (both of us).  I knew we'd be just fine.

Up until this point in Avignon, however, we hadn't really spent time just sitting around and doing nothing.  And now, as the sun began to set, we settled ourselves on the cool damp, bank and started a long conversation.

As the evening began to turn chilly we huddled and chatted about our dreams and friends and our feelings about the situations around us, the conversation punctuated by the click of camera shutters at a sky striated with soft carpbelly clouds.

You know how sometimes you're not sure what you can talk about with a person?  And then you realise that you guys can discuss pretty much anything and you both feel yourselves relax and open up?  That night in Avignon was just that.

Bear and I were the only two people on the bank just then.  We talked and laughed and snapped away and when the sun started to really show off, we fell silent, filled with awe at a sunset that seemed to be made just for us.  And as I always am when confronted with the majesty of nature, I was filled with an overflowing gratitude to the universe; with the feeling that I was, at the same time, unspeakably tiny and glowing and immense. 

Eventually, it got too cold and dark and we started to get hungry so we quickly and quietly packed up and walked back into town.  We got to know each other even better over the days that followed, but I think it really started that evening at what felt like the world's end.

PS  This was the last picture I took that night, standing on a street corner outside a church that had caught my eye, while Bear waited near me. 

A waiter came out of the restaurant behind me, crept up with his tray of drinks and yelled in a jokey attempt to frighten me.  I was so engrossed in taking the picture that I didn't even jump and apparently, he and Bear exchanged grins at my obliviousness.  As he walked past, she grabbed my shoulder and pointed him out and that was when I snapped out of my daze and realised that he was actually... pretty cute.

But that's another story, and shall be told another time.