huck

So evidently, this guy, known as Johnny Halliday, is the “French Elvis”. To me, he looks like the unholy progeny of The Fonz, David Hasslehoff, and post-plastic surgery Kenny Rogers. Sacrè bleu!

Lordy lordy, Avignon knows how to party. To welcome the new flock of foreign exchange students, they throw a giant shindig in the center of town and play shitty techno for everyone to make fun of. Truly, this is the Austin of France.

Note my friend Flo representin’ UT (his gf is in law school there).

Unfortunately, I went to the wrong train station this morning, so I had to spend another day in the pestilential hellhole that is Avignon. With its gorgeous architecture, temperate climate, ever-present breeze (called “le mistral” by locals), and young, gregarious citizenry, I swallowed hard and allowed Aude to take me back into the maelstrom.

Since Aude is a student at the University of Avignon, the city where she grew up, her roommate is her mum, who had just returned from choir my first evening. As Aude improvised a late dinner, I spoke with Madam Rochat in best French, and she sang a brief aria in the hallway on her way to bed. We stayed up to drink wine, and look up pictures of Austin on the internets.

So, evidently, popes used to live all up in Avignon before the whole Rome thing. A few drinks in us, Aude gave me the skinny on A-town’s centuries-long history of papal couch-surfing, whilst we walked among the quiet, cobblestone streets and got dizzy staring up at the towers and turrets.