Did I mention that it’s a really damned big castle?

I’m really at a loss here; the end of the trip is coming up, and I’ll admit, I’m looking forward to getting home, but I’m enjoying these last couple days.

Something I took away from the Mediterranean Sea is a sense that, amazingly, the tourism advertisements and stories I’ve read about the place really do not do the sea justice. I’m accustomed to an ocean that is dark, cold, and remote; a beauty that can really only be appreciated in the sense that a predator’s grace is admirable. The Mediterranean is different. It’s blue in a thousand shades, all of them gem-like. Each isolated cove brings something new.

We saw three firefighting seaplanes, doing water drills. That was special. We were treated to a flyby by some kind of French military fighter jet, which blew past overhead as we picked our way up to a lighthouse on a rocky promontory. We ate haute cuisine at a dockside bar, and dangled our feet over the edge of the pier, watching hundreds of black fish in the deep, clear blue waters just beside a massive ferry.

And now, Avignon.

There is a palace here, one of the finest examples of a Gothic citadel in Europe, still largely intact, and it is huge. Only pictures can do it justice, but the computer at our hotel — from which I post this — cannot recognize our camera, and therefore I cannot show you these pictures. I’ll probably come back and attach them to this post later, so keep an eye on it.

The food is amazing, the hotel is the nicest we’ve had so far, and the people all seem very friendly. Interestingly, I’ve heard more english in Avignon in one day than in the rest of our trip put together. It seems that this place is a very popular tourist destination, and once I have the pictures up, you’ll see why.

I can’t really add a lot more without those, so I’ll leave off here.