Castles, caves and valleys of Southern France − 18 June, 2004
6/18 Paris to Bergerac to Duras
Arrive in Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, planning/hoping to meet Josh there for taking a train down south to meet Mom in Bergerac. Getting off plane, slightly confused about finding bags etc, I talk to two American girls and we progress together thru customs. Heading toward baggage, crowd spreads as security explodes a bag. We then make way to get bags, and find Josh waiting directly outside customs. We head toward train station together and board train to Bergerac, requiring one switch in Bordeaux?
5 hours later arrive in Bergerac, meet Mom with Yvonne and Stephen at the train station. We walk into town, find a restaurant to eat at, walk back to the car and drive to Duras, where the adults had been staying in a rented farmhouse called a "gite". Arrived at dusk to the open fields of hilly farmland and this traditional French home constructed of plaster and ancient wood beams.
6/19 Duras
Day of relaxing in and around the gite. Adults had set out baguette, croissants, jams and fruits for breakfast. Ate and Josh and I played life-size checkers in back field, walked across road to home of gite-owner whose property was adorned with revealing sculptures. Drove into Duras to explore town, shop for fresh foods at the market and buy salmon vegetable skewers for dinner that we bring back to grill. Take a drive with Yvonne and Stephen to a nearby small town downhill from the gite, don't remember if for any other reason than to drop off recyclables. Enjoyed our last evening of the relaxing French farmhouse life.
6/20: Duras to Les Eyzies in the Dordogne
Explore cave at Grotte de Font de Gaume, oldest open prehistoric cave in France (because Lascaux is closed off). Hike uphill to cave and take tour in French. After, hike back along road into town and enter some shops selling art, artistic clothing and prehistory souvenirs. For dinner, selected a bistro restaurant across street from hotel, ate simple, traditional fare.
6/21: Les Eyzies to Figeac
Hotel directly on the river, tight parking spot out front in alley. Explored town including shopping alleys and narrow walkways, picking up pastries and orange drink on the way uphill toward museum where mold of Rosetta Stone is housed in one of France's best Egyptian museums. We explored museum along with school tour group, seeing many mummies. After museum continued up to top of hill where an eerie old church stands guard over town of Figeac in the river valley below. Walked back down, argued at hotel room about who had to sleep on the cot, played some cards, ate at I'm recalling maybe an Italian type restaurant? Town seemed to have lively bar scene but Josh and I didn't sneak out for this.
6/22: Figeac to Belcastel
L'Hotel du Vieux Pont
5-star restaurant
6/23: Belcastel to La Malene/Gorges du Tarn
Harrowing drive along side of gorge, through some tunnels cut into the cliffside, to reach clearing of town La Malene. Hotel is on left side of gorge. Hiked up a little ways on our side of the gorge, then down to Tarn river and looked into canoe trips. Water was cold and timing didn't work out too well for the day trip, so we hiked across bridge and up the right side of the gorge, reaching a sculpture that looked tiny from the river. We hiked back down to bridge level and then downstream farther along, reaching many winding curves of the river before turning back toward the hotel.
Dinner?
6/24: Gorges du Tarn to Pezenas
Shopping - marzipan fruits in candy store
Jewish ghetto
Butcher shop with local specialty some type of meat pie. Turned out to be quite gross.
6/25: Pezenas to La Couvertourade to Salses to Perpignan
La Couvertourade was a fortress city built and held by the Knight's Templar. Josh was interested because he was reading The Da Vinci Code at the time.
Salses was another fortress city that we toured in the afternoon. We got to see the courtyard and then learned about the many rooms and dungeons of the castle.
Most notable part of this leg was getting ridiculously lost finding our hotel in Perpignan. Kept getting sent down tiny alleys, forced out of town and back in, missing roads and having no clue how to find the hotel. As navigator for this leg, I somehow received blame for this. Dragosta din tei was often playing on the radio at this time.
6/26: Perpignan to Collioure to Ceret
Collioure was amazing beach resort town where Mom met up with a friend that she had made on the flight out to France who was an artist with a studio there. Josh and I first swam for a bit in the swimming cove to the left side of the main harbor. We then rented mountain bikes and biked up toward the far cove, then back and up into the Pyrenees for about 5 miles. We reached a point on the road where we couldn't climb any more and cars were zipping blindly around the hairpin turns, so we turned back. The descent back into town was a 15 minute joyride of praying that the brakes wouldn't give out. We for some reason had to carry the bikes through town as Mom took care of laundry, and the bike lifting ironically stained my brand new white boardshorts that I wore for the first time that day and have been oil-stained ever since.
We would have gladly stayed in Collioure for a much longer time but the hotel was reserved in Ceret so we drove along. There we ate at a seafood restaurant where the waiter convinced me to order a seafood platter. It tasted like it was carried directly from the tidepools to my plate with no cleaning or cooking of the critters along the way. We then saw a concert in a town square of Sephartic music from this region.
6/27: Ceret to Carcassone
Castle
6/28: Carcassone to Toulouse
Heard more Dragosta din tei but eventually found hotel Ours Blanc, a modern hotel in a bustling part of town. Town was full of university students, people packed into parks, squares and roundabouts. Seemed like a young and lively city. Got ice cream out in the main marketplace/city hall square which was largest open square we'd seen.
Crepe restaurant, I played with the butter.
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It is at this point that Josh and I bid our Mom adieu and boarded a train for the second leg of this trip, up to Geneva. Read about this in the next posting!
