Getting to Avignon was a bit of a trek – Ohio to Toronto by car, Toronto to Reykjavik (Iceland), Reykavik to Paris, and Paris to Avignon, with layovers in between. All told, it took about 34 hours door-to-door. With the time change and travel on both ends, it turns out to be four days of traveling for four days in Provence. That, at times made me wonder if it was all worth it, and if we should have just stayed in Paris or northern France.

It was not all travel. We cleared European Union customs in Reykjavik, so getting through the airport in Paris was easy. We checked where we were going to get our high-speed train for Avignon at 5:00 pm, and still had over three hours of time, so we grabbed a taxi to head into the town area of Roissy-en-France, the Paris suburb where the airport is located. We figured we could at least grab some not-at-the-airport supper.

The little downtown area of Roissy-en-France is cute – the taxi dropped us off on a small two-block street that had a few restaurants, and we ate at a small pizza place. After supper, we explored the area some, checking out a park and a cemetery. I know cemeteries are an odd thing to visit as a tourist, but we find them interesting – there are stories to be told in them. Here, a strange number of people seemed to die on the young side – 50’s and 60’s, although there were still a surprising number of people making it into the 80’s and 90’s. There were some WW I graves, and a section set apart for about thirty WW I and WW II graves that were specially set apart as a memorial. Some of the gravestones had pictures on them, and many of the graves were heavily decorated with lots of plaques and flowers. It seems as if Europeans visit and care for graves more often than Americans do, or it is a result of having slightly-raised graves that do not require lawn care – you can decorate them if they do not have to be mowed.

We also checked out the local church, which was open but empty of people. It was a good-sized church, but fairly simple inside, and was a quiet place to visit. We finished our little tour of the town by walking along the restaurant street to the town hall, where we waited by a fountain for our Uber car to take us back to the airport.

The train trip to Avignon was uneventful, except the high-speed train had to be moved over to slower tracks because of flooding on the line from heavy rains earlier in the week. As such, we got to Avignon a little over an hour later than we were supposed to, which is not encouraging when you are trying to stay awake. But, we got here, and as we walked through the largely-deserted historic center on our way to our apartment, as we passed through the gates of the old walls of the city, I was reminded of why I do end up traveling thirty or more hours to get to places like this. Hello, Provence!