Day 13 & 14: Getting the band back together

 After about a week apart, our paths reconnected.  Mark and Ben drove from Bedoin to Nice and Sally flew to Nice. Mark and Ben started their morning with a visit to the ancient city of Avignon, where the popes loved to holiday, play, write, rule, or do other Popish kinds of things.  Within this old walled city was Palais des Papes (palace of the popes).  Every time I see such grandeur attached to church officialdom, I am simultaneously struck by the reverence and dedication that it took to build such monuments, and concerned that this was not at all what was intended when Jesus said: "The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." 

They also have a broken bridge in the town that is supposed to be quite a thing!  We took pictures and ticked it off our list of things we have seen. 

Another thing we have discovered is French parking.  They seem to have some very good words to describe their attitude towards parking.  Coming to mind are "ennui", "avant-garde", "laissez-faire"! Here it seems that lines in parking lots, the centres of roads, etc., are more philosophies to be considered (or rejected) according to one's tastes rather than rules or consideration of others. 

On we went after having ticked our tourist boxes. Sally, on the other hand, was being upgraded to business class on her flight from London to Nice.  It would have been nice to get that on a long-haul flight.  Regardless, what Sally had sought to avoid throughout her whole UK jaunt finally caught up with her: a Scotch Egg.  Scotch Egg and Campagne on the way to Nice.  Nice!! 

She did have to sit on the tarmac at Heathrow for quite some time in a long queue, but it was only a 30-minute delay in the end. But this was business class... "more of anything?", "more of everything!"

Whatever way we got there, it was nice to reunite in Nice!  The next morning we woke up to have breakfast on our balcony that overlooks the sea. 

After letting our breakfast go down, we were up for a short run along the promenade (where the Nice Ironman also has its run). Hot and humid was the call for the morning!

As we ran along, we came to the memorial for the 2016 terror attack that occurred on Bastille Day 2016. On that evening, 86 people were killed by a terrorist who drove a truck into the unsuspecting crowd.  After having been at Bondi Beach after the terror attack there, it was quite a special moment to stop at the memorial for the Bastille Day attack. 

After our run, we went to a great bike shop.  

Mark would be happy to spend the rest of his days here or buy almost everything in the shop! After this was a visit to the Boulangerie and supermarket for some supplies, so that we can sit on our balcony for the evening and watch the world go by.  Tomorrow, Mark rides the Ironman course with Ben, and Sal runs (not the whole Ironman course).