This Bird...

Chris and I left Omaha two months ago today. We are having a great time seeing and doing  beautiful and interesting things daily. But my travel news updates to share our experiences with you have been pretty sparse. That is because traveling is often mentally draining. It can include so much stimulation, decision making and, sometimes, anxiety, that it frequently doesn’t leave adequate energy for contemplation and creativity.

My encounter with this bird yesterday is a perfect example of where my attention and brain power often go.

Notice the partially eaten croissant this sparrow is guarding. 

It is late May, and we are spending a week in Avignon, France, which is a beautiful and historic UNESCO site and where, in search of safety and political stability, seven successive Catholic popes lived and worked in the 1300’s. This "vatican" is a wondrous complex of buildings and gardens called the Palais de Papes.

View from the Palais de Papes in Avignon, France.

Not far from Avignon is the city of Nimes, which has some extraordinarily well-preserved Roman ruins dating from 100 BC to 400 AD. So, we planned a day trip there to view the temples, a coliseum and museum. No organized tour, no guide providing transportation. Just us taking the train and seeing the sites on our own. We've done day trips before, so we knew we had to figure out what to see in Nimes, how to get to each sight, how much time to allot for the day and how to get to and from Nimes.

Transportation by train is easy, but…. There are two train stations in Avignon, each serving entirely different train systems. And because we are in the middle of an almost week-long holiday around the religious (and bank) holiday of Ascension Thursday, train options are limited, or already sold out (you have to be attuned to holidays when traveling and we have learned there is a difference between bank/legal holidays and general holidays.) Anyway, Chris is becoming the train expert and was able to book a departure from the correct station, which was also too far from our location in the the city center to walk. 

Our first successful train venture was in Spain for a day trip from Barcelona to Girona.

So, how to get to that station? Somewhere, we learned we could take a bus, but we had to figure out where to catch that bus, how to buy a ticket and, crucially, understand which bus schedule was operating that day – the regular school year schedule, the regular schedule when school is out, the Sunday schedule, the holiday schedule...

The helpful staff at the tourism office guided us through all these steps, so we decided to make a practice run to the train station the day before. (We already get somewhat anxious about catching a train because, each time, we need to find the correct platform (stairs, with luggage, are often involved), figure out when are we allowed to enter the platform and where we should wait on the platform to be near our assigned car and board within the very few minutes that each train is stopped for passenger loading.)

On our practice day, we timed the walk from our apartment to the bus stop, but arrived completely perplexed about which direction the bus would go. Which side of the street was our correct stop? Fortunately, uniformed bus staff were milling about so I was able to use my middling French to ask for the location (speaking French also takes extensive brain power). Turns out we were still a block away from our correct stop, plus the tourist office’s information was wrong and there were actually almost no buses to the train station that day. 

It's a pleasant walk to the bus stop. 

So, the practice run was educational, but unsuccessful.

The next day, when we HAD to arrive at the train station by our departure time, we planned to take the first bus of the day, ensuring we would arrive early and have plenty of time to navigate the unfamiliar station. But when we arrived at the bus stop, the electronic sign said no bus would depart for at least half an hour. This did not follow any of the bus schedules we had. Why?

Who knows? But now we had plenty of time to walk across the street for a coffee and pastry. We had been trained in how to ask for a “long” coffee, so we could get a coffee closest to the American style, and I ordered two. But what arrived was one “long” coffee and one espresso. Why? Who knows? We just mixed the two and returned to the stop where we sat drinking our coffee and eating our croissants.

Pigeons were pecking around, but we paid them no mind. Suddenly, as I was holding the last quarter of my croissant a sparrow DIVE BOMBED me and GRABBED THE CROISSANT FROM MY HAND. I yelped and jerked my hand and the croissant fell to the ground. The bird immediately swooped back to snatch it and carry it away. I was completely startled! That bird wasn’t waiting for crumbs – he was actively hunting.

I thought maybe it was desperate for food for a nest full of babies, but it just dropped the pastry nearby and never seemed to take a bite.

The bus arrived soon after, but I was still a bit shaken. So, when I asked the driver what time he would depart (again, in my barely passable French) my brain would not process his very simple response, and I got confused about whether he was saying “six”, “sixteen” or “sixty” minutes (because, who knows when the bus would leave since, so far, nothing had followed what we thought was the schedule). Finally, he held up six fingers. We boarded the bus and made it to the train station! (We also made it to Nimes and back.)

Successful arrival at the train station for our day trip to Nimes, France!

Plus, we saw wonderful sights in Nimes.

These were our views when we rested and ate a snack in between sights.

And the train ride back to Avignon wasn't bad either.