Sur Le Pont D’Avignon

I wake up because my companions are calling me to look at something. It is the Palace of the Popes. According to the history that I pieced together from my extensive research (which included watching something on the discovery channel on the Knights Templars and wracking my brain for what I can remember from grade school history), it seems that around the 14^th century in 1309 (ok, I looked that date up), Pope Clement V makes the move and Avignon becomes the Christianity capitol. The French Popes began building this beautiful palace, calling in artists from Italy and the best furniture makers and all that. (The Rhone wine known as Chateauneuf-du-Pape takes its name from this palace: literally, New House of the Pope.) Toward the end of the 1300’s there seems to have been some disagreement with the cardinals and there were Popes elected willy-nilly – sometimes three at a time – one in Avignon one in Pisa and one in Rome. The various Popes spent some time excommunicating each other and arguing. Finally, they got it worked out, which of course is neither here nor there since we essentially drove up to the Pope’s palace and looked at the outside. Then we drove past the Pont St-Benezet, which is the first stone bridge across the Rhone. I tried singing the Sur La Pont D’Avignon, but I couldn’t remember all of the words. Finally, we reached our destination – an internet café – where naturally, after struggling with the French keyboard, I was unable to post anything. Century, Popes were finding it more and more difficult to deal with the political climate in Rome and decided to move their headquarters to Avignon, which was part of the Papal territories.