Disappointed Hotel Owner

We arrived in Avignon early in the morning and decided to share a room near the train station instead of going to the only hostel in town which is away from the center. We found a humble little hotel with an old lady owner who is friendly and humorous. The humor however ended when we made a passing comment and mistakenly told her that we found her hotel from our 'Lets Go' guide book. She hunted us down later to show her the book. When we showed her the recommendation was actually only in the 'Lonely Planet' guide book, she nonchalantly replied 'Oh, I know that already' and walked away clearly annoyed that we had her hopes up. To hotel owners, getting listed in these guide books is big business. To be in the Lonely Planet AND Lets go is like being listed in the top 10 search result of both Yahoo AND Google.

Bored. Taken in the washroom in the Palais de Pape

Our room was luxurious compared to what we had at Montpelier. Anchit clearly went nuts when he saw the spanking new washroom.

Lavender dolls sold in the streets

In my humble opinion, Avignon is a big tourist trap. It has two main attractions. The Palais de Papes and the Avignon bridge. Both big disappointments.

The Palais de Papes is a Castle where many Popes resided before the centre of Catholisim was moved to the Vatican. The 9 Euro entrance fee was a waste of money. They obviously tried very hard to create a tourist attraction out of an old castle. The castle is excessively big with hundreds of bare rooms. What drove me crazy was the audio guide which had to go into excruciating detail about each and every room you entered. Every audio entry would begin with 3 minutes of useless detail such as "You are now in the third bedroom of the fifth residence in the second wing in the seventh Glory tower belonging to the eleventh order of the Bishops. The painting on the eastern wall facing the western wall was moved here from the western wall which faced the eastern wall in the seventh bedroom of the first wing in the fifth corridor of the third tower...." etc etc. I may have exaggerated a bit but you get the gist. I was ready to throw the audio guide out the window.