Teleportation during weekend travels

It’s pretty easy to forget that there’s life outside of Paris. Thankfully, our amazing staff at the ACCENT center wouldn’t let us forget so easily. Two weekends ago, they organized a trip for all the USC students to travel south of the bustling city of lights. One hop, skip and a TGV (this stands for Train à Grande Vitesse or, in other words, really fast train) ride later, we found ourselves in the ancient town of Avignon.

Unlike the bustling city of lights hundreds of miles north of it, Avignon is a quiet, picturesque town not too far from France’s southern coast. Walking around the unpaved, cobblestone streets of the city makes you feel like you’ve been teleported out of the real world and into one of your old Modern European History AP textbooks. And despite the plethora of shops and restaurants teeming with tourists, one can’t help but soak in the history of the surroundings. This proved especially true when faced with one of the largest medieval palaces in European history — the Palais de Papes, or the Papal Palace.

For those of you who are as rusty on your European history as I was, I’ll give you a quick run down: In the 14th century, Avignon became the Papal Palace after Pope Clement V decided to move the papacy from its traditional place in Rome to Avignon. Since then, Avignon’s palace housed seven Popes, including two anti-popes (the Church suffered a Papal Schism in 1378, during which period they had not one, but two Popes — but I digress).

Avignon wasn’t the only place our weekend travels took us. After visiting the Papal Palace, we continued south towards Aix-en-Provence, stopping at Pont du Gard, an ancient Roman aqueduct bridge built in the first century, and Château des Baux, a site of the remains of a 10th century castle.

Though traveling to all these historic sites certainly made me appreciate all the incredibly well-preserved history around me, it also reminded me that one doesn’t have to wander too far to see the history that lines all European cities. In fact, one would be pretty hard pressed to walk anywhere in Paris for too long without encountering some amazing part of history. In fact, I can see the Bastille, an important site in the history of the French Revolution of 1789, as I write this just outside my window.

Now that’s a view I could get used to.