It's hard to time a trip to see blooming plants!

We started the day driving on some narrow, windy roads through the mountains to Senanque Abbey.  The monks that built this place really wanted to be alone!  We were shooting to get there in time for Mass first and then hoping to see the beautiful lavender fields blooming and take pictures with them.  Oops.

The fields of lavender are right between Genevieve's head and the church.  Notice how not purple they look.  

Hmmm.  That was the whole point for planning this trip at this time of year.  We were all disappointed.

This is what it is supposed to look like.  Brian took a picture of the post card.

After Mass we took pictures anyway and then went in to buy some lavender items from the monks.  Then it was back to the van and the windy roads.

On to Avignon, first thing we did was grab lunch.  I had this delicious coffee drink that was half espresso and half sweetened condensed milk called a Cafe Bombon.  Wow, I wish I'd never had it.  Do you know how hard it is to resist adding sweetened condensed milk to my coffee now?!

Then we went straight to the Pope Palace.  For a time in Church history, the Popes moved the papacy, their "home-base" if you will, to Avignon in this palace.  It is now a museum, and a fairly high tech one at that!

They had tablets as audio and visual guides.  Each room had a base that you could point your tablet at to charge the 3D picture of the room with furniture as it once was.  Then there was a scavenger hunt in the 3D land for the kids to collect amulets as they discover new things, open boxes, look under different items, etc.  The middle four kids got really into it.  The oldest and the youngest just didn't care.

Using the Tablet

No Tablet in Hand

No Tablet in Hand

The tour of the Pope Palace included a tour with an audio guide to the Pont St. Benzet which is a Medieval bridge that was too expensive to keep up and no longer reaches across the Rhone River, but stops in the middle.  

A Frenchman jumped into the picture to be silly.

We stopped for dinner before going to our farm house apartment.  The kids relished the chance to have syrups again with their dinner.  And we met a British couple that complimented the kids as we were finishing up our dinner.  After dinner, I could hold them off no longer and the kids went on the carousel that had been calling their name since we passed it the first time and then sat in sight of it for dinner.

This was outside our farm house apartment.