Our first full day in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, we decided to take a train to Niemmes. We looked up train schedules and made our way to the train station around 8 am. The SNRF woman took awhile looking at piles of paper and consulting computer screens and finally explained to us that there were no trains to Niemmes but a bus from Avignon.

We should have realized something was up. See, Niemmes is a rather large town. There are typically 10 trains a day running from L’Isle there. But, on this random weekday, there were none.

But, we were adapatable. We would go to Avignon, instead. Famous bridge, Palace of the Popes, more than enough to keep us busy for a day.

While witing the 20 minutes for our train, we saw that the earlier train to Avignon (and another in the opposite direction) never arrived. No problem, we thought, some sort of an accident causing a delay.

Again, we should have realized something was up.

But, we made it to Avignon on a train full of high school students and enjoyed a rather lovely day there.

We saw the famous bridge, no longer connected to the other bank due to a large flood hundreds of years ago (though we were far too cheap to pay to walk along it).

We went and saw the Palace of the Popes. Longest. Audioguide. EVER. But, still, it’s worth a visit if you can get there on a less tour group-overun day than we did. Again, no photos allowed so, instead, here’s a photo of Mary atop the cathedral next door.

And a bonus cathedral photo.

Again, rather lovely day for a visit. Winds were very strong but we’d worn long-sleeve shirts and Matt hadn’t worn his contacts (wind tends to blow sand into them which is rather painful). We even had a very lovely three course lunch.

Then, the trouble came. We were trying to make the 13:57 train and got in line to buy tickets (silly machines not accepting actual cash) about 25 minutes beforehand. Eventually, Matt and I separated – he went to find out about buses and I waited in line for an English-speaking SNCF employee. Come to find out that, oh, they had no trains running and didn’t anticipate having any at all until at least 10 pm.

Quick text message to Matt to tell him this – and that we should head over to the bus station under the Ibis Hotel. We met up halfway there then ran together to try to catch a random bus he’d seen that displayed L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue as its final destination. We thought we’d missed it but I saw the sign out of the corner of my eye and we managed to be the last two people on board before it left. Despite my panic, we made it back to L’Isle 30 minutes later.

Right after we got back, we picked up the car and drove to St Remi and wandered around its very Provencal streets (this is where we got the fresh pasta). Our day probably would have been ruined had we not had that visit. It let us calm down the insanity of almost geting stuck in Avignon*.

We eventually found out why all of the issues with the trains: ticket takers were on strike following the stabbing of a ticket taker on an overnight train.

* Okay, we didn’t almsot get stuck. I just paniced. No trains. No way to really find out the bus schedule – there didn’t seem to be any sort of information kiosk. But, really, we could have always paid for a taxi ride back. It would have been expensive, but we were not really stranded, just delayed. The bus actually cost us five Euros less than the return train trip and only took a few minutes longer.