Sur Le Pont d'Avignon

Today I hopped the 0716 direct from Carcassonne to Avignon, arriving there just about 10 am.  I wanted to see the city and in particular the Palais des Papes, the palace which the Popes of Avignon used--for 100 years, the Pope didn't live in Rome, but in Avignon (1306-1406 AD)--it was a political thing.  Clement the VI was French, and he got fed up with Rome for some reason, so he moved the whole shebang to Avignon--perhaps the wine was better.  Anyway--I wanted to see that palace.  It's lovely, and big, and lavish in that cute little medeival way they had of making things "fancy", as my grandmother would have said.  I got to see the Pont d"Avignon from a distance--this weekend (starting Wednesday!) is their big annual festival of Avignon, and the place was PACKED with tourists.  I heard more than one English-speaker cursing at the winding little alleys which one would think would take one around the block--no such thing!  I didn't get to dance on the bridge because the line was SO long to get there, and I didn't wish to miss my train.  Also, they only allowed photos inside the Pope's Palace in 2 rooms . . . but I got some of the outside, at least.

On the train on my return trip, I sat with 3 young ladies (18, 19 and 20!) from Germany who were doing the 2-week backpack trip.  They are going to see Carcassonne and then go to Barcelona--both wise choices!  We started in French but quickly switched to English (their request) because, while they study English for 10 years of their 12 years of school, they don't have to take French at all.  We chatted right along about lots of things--one of the things they noted is that some French people recoil when they hear the German language spoken--probably understandable in an occupied country for most of WW II.  However, they said most of the French folks have been friendly and helpful, and they said that THEY were trying to be "ambassadors of goodwill amongst nations"--I agreed that was a noble goal.  They had been at the Taize Community for 6 days before heading south to Lyon and then Avignon.  I showed them where the Tourist Information kiosk is, right by the train station, so I hope they could find a hotel in town.  It was a nice day adventure, and maybe the nicest was seeing sunshine over Carcassonne as we pulled into the station!

When I got home, I just walked along the road towards La Cite, taking photos every hundred steps or so, so I won't forget the walk to the Medieval City on the Hill, which has been my backdrop for 3 months.  It's nice to see the sun after TWO SOLID WEEKS of rain!

More Castles and Stuff

The weather here has been as weird as it is in Seattle, so I'm told--it's been gray and rainy with a lot of wind every day since Ben left on July 15th.  So today I decided to see if there might be some sunshine down by the Spanish border, and I took off late morning for Chateau Peyrepertuse, one of the Cathar castles on what used to be the border with the kingdom of Aragon.  It's pretty close to Perpignan (the last big town on the coast before the Spanish border), and right across the valley from Chateau Queribus, where the wind took Ben's glasses off his face.  It took 2 hours of intense driving on little windy country roads to get there, but it was indeed a crowning sight on the granite "massif" hillside.  (Le massif is what they call the granite foothills of the Pyrenees--they ARE rather dramatic, just rising 1500 feet straight out of the rolling hills and farmland.)  Peyrepertuse, as I mentioned, was one of the "five sons of Carcassonne", along with Castles Aguilar, Puilaurens, Queribus and Thermes.  It's very dramatically placed on top of the hillside, and from a distance you'd have to know that it's there in order to see it--it's masquerading as part of the granite hillside, so you don't see it unless you look closely. 

I also saw Chateau d'Arques, which is a lowland Castle on the way to Peyrepertuse; but it was raining so hard I didn't want to get drenched to walk across a field to the castle!  I did have lunch in the town of Arques (pronounced just like Noah's big boat), which was fun--a little funky cafe which filled up right after I showed up.  One of their proud displays on the wall was a framed front page from the local paper announcing the complete and unconditional surrender of Hitler's Army back in 1945!  The memory of that War is still with the country of France--since they were occupied by the Germans for 4 years, there's still a lot of feeling about it.

After seeing Peyrepertuse (and I only took ONE wrong turn!), I tried to see the Abbaye at Alet-les-Bains, but it's under renovation work, and so it's closed.  I did get a photo of the remains of the 9th century cathedral which they are restoring just now.

And I DID see sunshine, briefly, between Peyrepertuse and Rennes-les-Bains, so I accomplished my goal.

Well, Albi . . .

I got to see the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in the city of Albi (about 85 miles from Carcassonne) on Friday last.  It is a remodeled palace, and so the architecture was interesting.  The entire museum is dedicated to the works of Toulouse-Lautrec, an artist who ties the impressionists to Picasso and cubism, I believe.  They have the world's largest collection of his works, and there are over 1,000 paintings--all this from a man who died at age 37 years (the same age as Mozart . . . ).  He was apparently very fond of absinthe, an alcoholic drink made from wormwood--well, some of the chemicals in wormwood apparently do hallucinogenic things to the brain and over time caused him to create more and more surreal paintings, as well as ultimately killing him, they think. 

The town of Albi is about 45,000 strong, so about the same size as Carcassonne.  It is on the north side of the Black Mountains, north and east of Toulouse--that area probably counts as the very southern tip of "The Dordogne", the large river valley through which the Dordogne River flows.  It is beautiful country, hilly and with greener vegetation than my Mediterranean climate down here in Carcassonne.
It is altogether lovely country.

Today I'm going to try to see Peyrepertuse, the castle which Ben and I missed on our VERY blustery day at Chateau Queribus (where the glasses were blown right off his face).  I'm not going to think about packing up and leaving until Thursday, when I have to do laundry to face the return journey.

Ben in France

Well, really, there are too many stories to tell.  Ben arrived in Paris on 7/1/11, and I was there at the gate to meet him when he came through customs.  I had taken the 0637 train from Carcassonne, and at 0721 caught the TGV (high speed train) from Narbonne to Paris-CDG airport.  The train comes into Terminal 2 at the airport, so I had to catch a shuttle to Terminal 1, but I was there waiting for him.  It was kind of funny, watching folks walk through the door after customs.  Several planes of dark-haired folks came through, and one military flight from Germany came through (everyone had on fatigues and carried camoflouged duffle bags).  But we could ALL tell when Icelandic Air landed and those folks started coming through the gates--white-blond hair on everybody (except Ben).  He kind of stuck out--too tall, too dark to be Icelander.

We took in Notre Dame after arriving and settling in at our hotel--good to keep moving, so as not to go to sleep (we were both tired! He'd been flying for 10 hours and I'd been on the train for 6).  We ate a meal at the restaurant next door to our hotel, Hippopotamus (the European equivalent of Denny's) and passed out for the night.  The next day, we went to the Louvre and Luxembourg Gardens.  The following day we took the 0910 train for Bayeux, in Normandy--2 hrs from Paris.  We saw the Bayeux Tapestry there (77 meters long!) which tells the story of the Battle of Hastings and William the Conqueror in 1066 AD.  I hadn't remembered that he was "William the Bastard" prior to that Battle--he was probably called worse by the Anglo-Saxons he conquered!  We were fortunate in that there was a Medieval Faire in Bayeux that Sunday afternoon, and what a wonderful place to have it!  The medieval town of Bayeux was just the best setting for that Faire.  There was music, and jugglers, and costumed folks on stilts amusing the crowd, and Norman apple cider (a specialty of the area) to taste.  It was altogether perfect!  On the Fourth of July we went around the town in the AM, saw Bayeux Cathedral and went to Omaha Beach, gun battlements at The Hook, and the US Cemetery and Military Memorial there.  A great way to spend Independence Day, remembering those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for freedom in 1944.

We took the evening train back to Paris, and on the 5th we went to Musee d'Orsay, the Impressionist museum in Paris which was made out of the old train station there.  Very interesting.  Walked around the Eiffel Tower area, ate dinner and went back to the Eiffel Tower for their nighttime show of twinkling lights on the Tower, which they do for 10 minutes every hour from 10 pm to 2 am.  It was fun.  The next morning we headed out of Paris for Beaune, a town in the middle of Burgundy.  We stayed at Lion d"Or, a nice hotel in the town, and went to Marche du Vins, a community wine-tasting experience held in an old abbey in town.  The next day, we met our guide, David, at 0900 and did a full day tour of the Burgundy Valley, complete with a great 6-course lunch with 10 wines to taste!  (Glad I wasn't driving!).  We saw the Cotes-de-Baune area and the Cotes-de-Nuits area, both of which produce great Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays (the only 2 grapes which grow in Burgundy, where the winters are pretty cold).  For Steve Schiebel: we saw the vineyards of Joseph Drouhin, the father of the Domaine Drouhin folks in Oregon!  It rained all day, but we got to taste wines in 4 different places, so we didn't care . . .

The next day we returned by train to Carcassonne.  Left Beaune at 0653 to Lyon, and caught the TGV around to Carcassonne, arriving here at 1320 in the afternoon!  (we thought we wouldn't get here til about 1630, but our reservations had us going to Toulouse, waiting for an hour, and then returning on a milk-run train to Carcassonne--as it turned out, the TGV stopped in Carcassonne on its way to Toulouse, so we hopped off and saved ourselves 3 hours!).  We toured castles, abbeys, museums, and just generally enjoyed a more relaxed schedule.  Ben LOVES cassoulet, the local specialty--a white bean stew with confit de canard (duck), and sausage, with or without pork added.  He had it four times, I believe.  Now he's gone back to the US, in search of the perfect cassoulet recipe.

On the Fourteenth of July (Jour de Bastille, their independence day), we watched the most amazing fireworks show over the walls of the old city that I have ever seen.  They really take their jour de Bastille seriously!  The day before that, we had visited some castles in the south, the "sons of Carcassonne"--the Castles which were on the border between Occitaine and the Spanish kingdoms of Navarre, Catalonia, and Aragon. We went to Queribus Castle on the day it was raining in Carcassonne, and for awhile we missed the storm--but while climbing up the long hill to the castle, the wind picked up to 80 mph gusts going through those castle walls/gates, and the wind actually blew Ben's glasses off his face!  (He caught them).  So we cautiously came down the hill and didn't go to Peyrepertuse, the neighboring castle which we could see from Queribus--we could see the wind and rain pounding that castle, so skipped it altogether!  But we had fun.  Ben has always loved climbing around on old castles--he loved it as a 3 year old in Ireland, and he loved it this trip, too.  He was very taken with the history of the area, as am I.  The apartment seems too quiet now that he's gone.

The Cave of Lombrives (Le Grotte Lombrives)

Yesterday I went to the Cave of Lombrives, in Ussat-les-Bain (Ornolac), Ariege (the region).  It is about 110 km from Carcassonne, south and west of my adopted "home".  When I got to the cave, I was only about 25 miles from Andorra.  The geology of the Pyrenees is very interesting.  The Pyrenees are relatively "new" mountains (hence their jagged peaks); and all along the area of the mountains, there are these HUGE granite and limestone cliffs which got "thrown up" at the same time.  They seem very incongruous with the countryside around them.  It's not a gradual transition to mountainous territory, as in the Pacific NW.  You're just rolling along in gently rolling hills and suddenly, it's as if some huge giant had just put these big boulders in your way.  And I mean BIG--often 5-10 miles long.  One can easily see how the Pyrenees were a major barrier to people trying to cross from what's now France into what's now Spain, or vice versa--why the Romans, who were pretty adventuresome,  didn't try to cross them, for example.

The Cave itself labels itself as the "largest in Europe" though how they measure that is apparently controversial.  It has at least 8 caverns which one can see, with guided tours lasting from 1-7 hours.  I took the 1.5 hour tour, which lets you into 3 of the caverns.  Unfortunately, one cannot take photos, even with flash "off".  And, my camera battery seems to have gone dead, so I couldn't take photos of the massive granite faces of the cliffs, either.  But it was very interesting to be there.  I was very interested in the fact that they are NOT preserving the vapor-lock on the caverns, which means that the caverns will be "dead" in another few years--no living algae, fungus, etc.  America learned that lesson with Carlsbad Caverns in California--they opened them up to the public in the late 1940s, creating new wider openings, and the algae were dead within 10 years.  I was very impressed with the precautions taken by the folks who run/preserve Karchner Caverns in Arizona (east of Tucson).  They are careful to limit the number of daily visitors, put you into 2 vapor-lock chambers before you actually enter the caverns, all in the name of preserving the caverns as a "living" entity.  Good to know we've learned a few things over time!

The grisly part of the history of Grotte Lombrives is that, in 1325, the Inquisition walled up 521 Cathars in the walls of the caverns, still alive.  They show you the wall of rock, but they have never excavated the bodies.  Another fine example of what the human animal does to itself.  The weather yesterday, incidently, was grey and foggy around the caverns, and that developed into full-blown thunderstorms in Carcassonne last night.  Somehow, knowing the history of the place, that fog and chill wind was just right.  The grey clouds and wind are still with us this morning.  Still, we're having real summer here, as opposed to the Seattle area, where (I understand) it's still mostly rain. (Click on the location map, below, to see where the Cave is--where it says "Ariege, France".)

Tracking the DaVinci Code

Boy, that title really makes it sound exciting!!  OK, at least made you look . . .

Today I went to Rennes-le-Chateau, a little village on top of a hillside overlooking the foothills of the Pyrenees to the south.  The name actually means "Reindeer of the Castle" so I need to ask somebody about that--are there really reindeer in southern France?!  Bet not!

 The signs which tell you that you're entering a town are rimmed in red like this.

 You can just see the peaks of some of the Pyrenees over those hills yonder!

 The Tower of Mary Magdalene, built by a priest who had avowed poverty. ("La Tour Magdala")

 The baptismal font in the church is held up on the shoulders of the Devil!!

 Notre Dame in Paris isn't the only place with gargoyles!

Every churchyard should have a skull and crossbones, don't ya think?

Rennes-le-Chateau, of course, is where the priest Berengar Sauniere supposedly "found" a treasure of something under the altar of his church sanctuary and went from being a pauper to being VERY well off.  He revitalized the church in the small town, and left some very bizarre decorating schemes behind, as well.  His maid and friend (?!) of 30 years, to whom he left his fortune, had promised to tell the source of his wealth on her deathbed--then she went and had a stroke, and couldn't tell anybody anything.  The DaVinci Code, of course, built up the idea that what he found were the documents "proving" that Mary Magdalene, who was pregnant by Jesus, came to that area and gave birth to the Holy Lineage, the Merovingian royal line.  (Pretty far-fetched, as my grandmother would say!)  But the church and the village have spun it into a tourist trade of note.  So I took photos in the church, in the village, and of Sauniere's "Magdala Tour".  But the nicest thing was stopping on the way up--one ascends the hill to the village on the north side of the hill, and the actual village with the church is on the south side of the hill; I stopped on the north side at the summit, and just gazed for a full 15 minutes in the sunshine (84 degrees with a nice breeze) at the silent world below me.  From up there, you couldn't hear cars, trains, planes, or mp3 players--it was blissful.  The Pyrenees even made an appearance!  And it's all less than an hour from Carcassonne.  I am loving the southern hills of SW France.  For the record, Tom Hanks was NOT there.

Getting a Haircut in France

So, time marches on.  And so does the growth of my hair; so I stretched it out (from April 26, my last hair cut) as long as humanly possible--until I was regarding the world through my bangs, which made me feel uncomfrotably like a teenager again.  So I asked my landlords who they use for haircuts, and got the name of a nice man in the ville of Carcassonne who does hair--he always does a good job, they said.  So I walked to the hairdresser place, and hoped I didn't need an appointment a month ago.  When I walked in, the (male) assistant was there, who assured me that yes, they could give me a haircut.  Mr. Franck Richard had only stepped out for lunch and would be back--soon.

In fact, he was back within about 10 minutes.  I got the obligatory shampoo (I tried to tell him that Marti always cuts the sides DRY and then does the shampoo!) and then sat in the chair.  And then, he took off my glasses.  And asked me, "what do you want done?" and I explained it had been 8 weeks since my last haircut and I didn't wish to change styles, just get it cut.  [I was proud of myself for remembering that the word for hair in French is 'le cheveu' (plural is "cheveux" which sounds just like the singular), while the word for horse is "cheval".  For some reason, I have always gotten those mixed up because they sound similar, and I had nightmares about telling him I wanted my horse cut, with him charging out onto the street with a butcher's cleaver in hand . . . but no, he understood that I wanted a haircut (taille de cheveux).]  He certainly took liberties with the styling . . . I'm going to have to call or email Marti and BEG her to cut my hair either Saturday late afternoon after I return or on Sunday afternoon, before I return to work on Monday.  Around the ears is ALL WRONG--I even considered--briefly--putting my hair on the prayer list at my church, but decided that some people would think that was petty, so I didn't.  But it definitely needs work.  For someone whose entire nod to beauty is getting my hair cut every 4-5 weeks, the haircut is IMPORTANT--it needs to stay out of my eyes, surely, while I gaze at babies, but it also needs to look good.  What can I conclude from this mortifying experience?  Never trust someone to cut your hair who has TWO FIRST NAMES.  I didn't go into the salon business, now, DID I?