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.
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