Rue des Teinturiers

Back in Avignon. The last time we arrived here a few days ago, it was 3:00AM.  No one was interested in eating any dinner.  The next day we were off on our bikes into the countryside.  All we saw of the city was the train station where the rental cars have all gathered and the imposing city walls with their gate towers.  This time, I wanted to head into the old walled city.  I’ve found what appears to be a particularly cool place, but they don’t take reservations.  No one else seems to think going out for dinner is a good idea. 

Compromise. We’ll cab it over to the twisting street that looks so close on the map, the street where the dyers once all had their water wheels and shops.  No one is particularly interested in learning why the slits in the towers were built to accommodate archers, or about how cool medieval guilds were.  But the cab helps to expedite what would have in fact, been a notable schlep and we reached the point beyond which cabs can’t travel to start our journey down the winding, millennium’s-old Rue des Teinturiers beside the River Sorgue. 

A bit of a lark, we are looking for a place call “L’Ubu” that is supposed to be extremely hip at 9:00PM on a Thursday night.  I am actively scoping out compromise eateries to fall back on as we’re likely to be turned away and the neutral mood won’t last long. The street is full of people and late dusk shadows and it isn’t hard to imagine what it might have been, when these plane trees were four hundred years younger.

L’Ubu, which, my kids and I agree, sounds a bit like the mighty warrior from the Three Kingdoms, appears before us sooner than expected.  They have a place for us to sit outside to the side of the pedestrian flow.  “We’ll have a table for you, in less than ten minutes.”  The waiter sports a trim beard and specs and he dashes off after we’ve been settled all this, promising to return shortly with waters for all.  And soon he’s back, jumping over another table to serve a couple and then with similar vim, is on to us again.  “Let me move you to your spot.”  Remarkably he confirmed that he grew up here, just down the road.

I’m not facing the street, but rather the wall of an old building, above the water, and they are broadcasting a strange video mix of nonsensical stitch-togethers.  The food was a not particularly memorable, being all a bit too consciously metro, but the waiter was fun and the setting with its parade of odd actors, tourists and touts all yelling and it seemed almost certainly to be the thing I would most strongly remember about this city.