We took the long road to Avignon and visited the market at Lourmarin where we got cheese, meat and bread to eat along the way. The large, half round of cheese in the first photo is Cantal. We have a recipe that calls for cantal, but I couldn’t find it in Albuquerque. There is a castle in Lourmarin as well. Then we drove to Bonnieux, a picturesque 12th century village built on a hill. The photo with the church in the foreground shows Mont Ventoux in the background.  We passed by an old bridge that was probably either Visigoth or Roman on our way to Roussillon. There is a similar bridge in northern Spain that is Visigoth. Roussillon is painted with the red and yellow pigments they make from the soil in the area. We ate lunch on a bench in an area protected from the wind and watched the light change on Mont Ventoux in the distance. You can tour the valley and the operation for making the pigments, but it was cold and windy so we didn’t do the tour. Gordes is an amazingly beautiful village built on and in the rocks on the side of a hill. After Gordes we visited Fontaine du Vaucluse, which is a headwater, but instead of a trickle of water from a melting snow pack that eventually turns into a river, Fontaine du Vaucluse produces volumes of water gushing from a spring. Parking was expensive, so we didn’t stop and get photos. After almost seven hours visiting , we made it to Avignon. Avignon is a large city, so it takes a bit of driving to get to the old city still surrounded by a wall. The Papal Palace is quite an imposing structure, a very well fortified building.