Avignon

MRS airport to Avignon(1 to 1.5 hours)

Airport navette to Vitrolles-Aeroport TER station, then TER to Avignon Centre (~55 min, ~EUR 15). A taxi for the 85 km runs EUR 150-180 and is rarely worth it. Arriving by TGV instead? Virgule shuttle, EUR 1.90, or a taxi hop for ~EUR 15.

Check in intra-muros(1 hour)

Stay inside the walls. Rue Joseph Vernet and Place Crillon are the polished end (Hotel d'Europe has been putting up travellers since 1799); Place Pie near Les Halles is convenient and noisier; the Teinturiers quarter is the bohemian one. If you are here in July for the Festival, you booked six months ago — if you did not, base in Nimes or Arles and commute 30 minutes by train.

Orientation loop to Place de l'Horloge(45 minutes)

Walk up Rue de la Republique to the main square with the town hall, the opera and a 19th-century carousel. Insider note: this is the one square in Avignon where locals do not eat. Look, photograph the carousel, then leave.

Sunset from the Rocher des Doms(1 hour)

Free, open from 7:30AM daily. The clifftop garden sits directly above the Palais with a full sweep over the Rhone, the broken bridge and Villeneuve on the far bank. It is almost entirely locals with dogs and prams. Best sunset spot in the city, and you have not paid for anything yet.

Dinner on Place des Corps-Saints(2 hours)

The plane-tree square where Avignon actually eats. L'Agape does a serious modern Provencal menu around EUR 35-45; Ginette et Marcel next door is the cheap-and-charming option, tartines and a pastis for under EUR 20.

Palais des Papes at opening(2 hours)

Doors at 9AM. Take the included Histopad AR tablet and actually use it — the Revolution sold off nearly every furnishing, so the rooms are stripped stone and the tablet is the only thing that rebuilds them around you. Do not skip the Chambre du Cerf, the pope's private study, painted with hunting and fishing scenes that are startlingly secular for a papal bedroom.

Cathedrale Notre-Dame des Doms(30 minutes)

Free, wedged against the palace. The gilded Virgin on top has been visible from everywhere in the city since 1859. Inside, find Pope John XXII's carved Gothic tomb — it was smashed in the Revolution and reassembled, which is why the figure looks slightly wrong.

Lunch off the forecourt(1 hour)

Walk two minutes off the Palais square to escape the tourist pricing. La Manutention, tucked behind the palace on Rue des Escaliers Sainte-Anne, is the old munitions building turned bar-cinema-restaurant; plats around EUR 16 and a courtyard under plane trees.

Pont Saint-Benezet(45 minutes)

~EUR 5, or included in your combined ticket. Four of the original 22 arches survive; the Rhone took the rest, repeatedly, until the city gave up rebuilding in the 1600s. The nursery rhyme has people dancing sur le pont — the dancing actually happened on the island below it, which you can see from the deck. The audio guide is short and worth the 20 minutes.

Musee du Petit Palais(1 hour)

~EUR 6, closed Tuesdays, at the far end of the Palais square. The largest collection of Italian primitives outside Italy plus an early Botticelli Virgin and Child, and it is reliably empty while 800 people queue 100 metres away.

Rhone wines at Le Carre du Palais(1.5 hours)

A grand old bank building on Place de l'Horloge turned Rhone Valley wine school and bar. Flights from ~EUR 12. Ask for a Chateauneuf next to a Gigondas — you will taste the day trip you are taking later in the week.

Les Halles d'Avignon(1.5 hours)

Tue-Sun 6AM-1:30PM, free entry, behind a 600 sq m living green wall of 15,000 plants. Go by 9AM. Eat oysters standing at the seafood counter with a glass of Cotes du Rhone before 10AM like the market porters do — around EUR 12 the half-dozen. Aux Delices du Luberon has the tapenade worth carrying home. If it is Saturday, be at the front at 11AM for La Petite Cuisine des Halles: a local chef cooks a free demonstration and you taste it.

Musee Calvet(1 hour)

Rue Joseph Vernet, closed Tuesdays. Free permanent collection — genuinely unusual in France, and a tip worth exploiting. An 18th-century hotel particulier with a courtyard of plane trees, Vernet seascapes and a Soutine. Musee Requien, natural history, is next door and also free if you have children to burn 30 minutes on.

Musee Lapidaire(45 minutes)

Rue de la Republique, free, closed Tuesdays. A Jesuit chapel full of Roman and Gallic stone — the Tarasque of Noves, a Celtic monster clutching severed heads, is the reason to come. Ten minutes if you are efficient, and worth it for that one object.

Free afternoon(3 hours)

Deliberate. Nap through the 30-35C heat like the city does, or take a Vellopop bike (~EUR 1 day subscription, first 30 min free) and ride the outside of the ramparts. Note that unlike Carcassonne you cannot walk along the top of Avignon's walls — the loop is at ground level.

Rue des Teinturiers at dusk(2 hours)

The dyers' street: cobbles, plane trees and four surviving waterwheels turning in a branch of the Sorgue that once powered the cloth trade. In July this is the beating heart of the Festival OFF and its 1,500 fringe shows; the rest of the year it is bars, students and no coaches. Check what is on at Cinema Utopia in the old school building — arthouse, unsubtitled and subtitled, ~EUR 7.

Dinner at La Fourchette(2 hours)

17 Rue Racine. The Hiely family bistro, walls covered in forks, doing the old Avignon repertoire — daube, brandade, meringue glacee — for around EUR 35. Closed weekends, book a day ahead.

Pont du Gard(3 hours)

~EUR 9.50 including parking and museum. Three tiers, 49 m tall — the highest bridge the Romans ever built, assembled around 50 AD without a drop of mortar. Park on the Rive Gauche side and walk across; almost everyone stops at the first viewpoint, so continue up the marked path on the Rive Droite for the shot looking down the length of it. In summer, swim in the Gardon underneath: the water is cold, the view upward is the entire point.

The museum and the Memoires de Garrigue trail(1 hour)

The underground museum explains how they held a 1-in-3000 gradient over 50 km with no instruments, which is the actually astonishing part. The 1.4 km garrigue trail behind it is empty and smells of thyme and holm oak.

Drive to Uzes(25 minutes)

20 km northwest through vineyards and stone. If you are on the A15 bus, it continues here.

Place aux Herbes, Uzes(1.5 hours)

A perfectly arcaded square under plane trees, and one of the loveliest in the south. Saturday morning is the full market and it is enormous — if your day 4 can land on a Saturday, move it. Lunch under the arcades; the Tour Fenestrelle, the only round Romanesque bell tower in France, is a two-minute walk.

Musee du Bonbon Haribo(1 hour)

~EUR 8, on the edge of town. Yes, really — Haribo has made sweets here since the 1860s and the museum ends in a tasting room. It is unashamedly silly and it is the thing every French family in Uzes is actually doing.

Return to Avignon(45 minutes)

45 km. Dinner back inside the walls — Le Vin Devant Soi on Rue de la Balance pours 40-odd Rhone wines by the glass off enomatic machines with a charcuterie board, which is exactly the right amount of effort after a Roman day.

Bus 5 to Villeneuve-lès-Avignon(20 minutes)

Orizo line 5 from Avignon, ~EUR 1.40. Almost nobody crosses the river, which is the whole reason to.

Tour Philippe-le-Bel(45 minutes)

~EUR 6. Climb the 14th-century tower that guarded the French end of the Pont Saint-Benezet. From the top you get the best view that exists of Avignon's walls, the palace and the broken bridge from the outside — the picture you have been trying to take for four days is taken from here.

Fort Saint-Andre(1 hour)

~EUR 6. Twin drum towers and a rampart walk over the Rhone plain. The abbey gardens inside (separate small fee) are terraced, half-ruined and usually contain about four people.

Chartreuse du Val de Benediction(1 hour)

~EUR 8. One of the largest Carthusian monasteries in France, three cloisters deep, and a Festival d'Avignon venue in July. Wander the monks' individual garden cells; the silence in the Cloitre du Cimetiere is the point.

Lunch in Villeneuve(1 hour)

The village centre round Rue de la Republique has proper unhurried French lunch at village prices — about a third off what the same plate costs across the river.

Navette fluviale to Ile de la Barthelasse(3 hours)

Back in Avignon, take the free ferry from Porte de l'Oulle (5-minute crossing, roughly 10AM-6PM, later in summer) to the largest river island in Europe. Walk the Chemin de la Barthelasse along the bank: the postcard of the Palais and the bridge together is shot from this side. Then do nothing under a poplar until the light goes.

Dinner back inside the walls(2 hours)

Le Petit Chaudron on Rue des Trois Faucons — tiny, market-driven, roughly EUR 30, and you must book. Or push the boat out at Pollen (Rue Petite Calade), Avignon's Michelin star, tasting menus from ~EUR 75, book two weeks ahead.

The galets roules in the vineyards(30 minutes)

Stop at any roadside parcel before the village and pick one up. These fist-to-melon-sized rounded stones were dumped by an ancient Rhone; they store the day's heat and radiate it back into the vines at night. It is why the wine is 14.5 percent and why you can barely walk between the rows.

Domaine visit and tasting(1.5 hours)

Book ahead — Domaine de Beaurenard (organic, family-run since 1695) and Chateau La Nerthe (the oldest estate in the appellation, arrived by an avenue of cypress) both take visitors properly. Ask which of the 13 permitted grape varieties they actually use; most growers lean on Grenache and will tell you exactly why.

Musee du Vin Brotte(45 minutes)

Free, at the village entrance. A small, unpretentious walk through how the appellation was invented in 1923 — the first controlled appellation in France, created because people were faking it. Tasting at the end.

Lunch at Le Verger des Papes(1.5 hours)

Terrace built into the rock beneath the ruined papal chateau, looking out over the Rhone valley to Avignon and Mont Ventoux. Plats around EUR 25-30 and a wine list that is basically the village. Book.

Chateau des Papes ruins(30 minutes)

Free, at the top of the village. Barely a wall and a keep survive — the Wehrmacht blew up half of it in 1944 and the rest fell down over 600 years. Come for the 360-degree view, not the masonry.

Vinadea, Maison des Vins(45 minutes)

Rue Marechal Foch. Around 100 of the village's producers under one roof at cellar-door prices, and they ship. If you are only buying once, buy here — you can compare six growers in 20 minutes, which no single domaine will let you do.

Last look from the Rocher des Doms(45 minutes)

Free from 7:30AM. Empty at this hour except for the dog walkers and the duck pond. Come up the ramp behind the cathedral and take the river view once more before the coaches arrive at the palace below.

Shopping at Les Halles(1 hour)

Tue-Sun 6AM-1:30PM. Buy the things that travel: tapenade and olive oil from Aux Delices du Luberon, vacuum-sealed saucisson, lavender honey, a jar of Provencal herbs that will humiliate the supermarket one at home. Check your airline's liquid rules before the olive oil.

Coffee on Place Pie or a last tart at Simple Simon(45 minutes)

Simple Simon on Rue Petite Fusterie has been serving improbably good English tea and tarts in the middle of Provence for decades, which is a very Avignon kind of joke.

Checkout and Virgule to Avignon TGV(45 minutes)

Shuttle train, 5 minutes, ~EUR 1.90, timed to the TGVs — or ~EUR 15 by taxi. Give yourself a buffer; the Virgule is reliable but infrequent. Heading to MRS instead? Allow 2 hours door to gate via Vitrolles-Aeroport.