The two week Spring break trip was FABULOUS! We visited three countries in sixteen days and so were not particularly rushed during our travels. During the first two weeks, Anne's sister Carol joined us in our travels in Southern France and Northern Spain. Not only was it fun to travel with her, she speaks Spanish and has a little knowledge of French. Hugely helpful for us monolingual travelers.
Carol joined us in Worcester and we left the next day for Montpellier, France on the most popular of all the discount airlines, Ryan-air. Unfortunately, the French air traffic control workers had selected the same day to hold a strike. Don't you just hate it when workers rights actually cause a small bump in your vacation plans? Fortunately, our flight was only delayed and so we arrived at our destination late at night and exhausted. We were met by our host with a bottle of St. Chinian wine and comfortable beds. Ahhhhh....
The next day we spent time getting oriented, finding a grocery store and generally looking around in our rental car. Much easier driving here, since they drive on the familiar side of the road. As you can see from the link above we were lucky to stay in a fabulous place in this small village - recommended by our friends, Jan and Marek, who have been coming here for years. Our hosts could not have been better, giving us advice and helping with any questions we had. We would recommend them to anyone looking for a lovely (and reasonable) place to stay in the wine country of S. France.
This map shows the area through which we journeyed with the Languedac Roussian region of France (where we stayed) on the upper right hand edge and Barcelona, Spain on the lower right edge next to the Mediterranean Sea.
Our first big adventure after picking up groceries in St-Pons-de-Thomieres was to veer off onto a small road that directed us to a grotto (cave). Since we knew that there were palaeolithic caves in the area and in fact planned on visiting some, we decided to find out more about this one. The road wandered in and out of valley and ridges and kept getting narrower and narrower until we came to a very small old village that seemed to be inhabited by only cats, dogs, and chickens. I know this wasn't the case but since all of the buildings were made of stone, it really had the feel of very, very old. We never did find the cave but did get to see the back roads of the area.
And now just a word about the food. I know that the world raves about French cooking but up until this point we had not had terribly great experiences eating here. In Paris it took us quite awhile to figure where the local people ate- and so kept ending up in places where the choices were pretty much steak and fries or 1/2 a chicken and fries, as they were trying to cater to the tourists.
Our first night out in St. Chinian left me (Anne) swearing off French food forever (this of course changed) and Linda and Carol both looking a little green. We went to a restaurant which served a set meal (2 or 3 courses for a set price.) We were the only ones in the dining room - though there were people in the bar. Note to self - this should have been a sign. Yes, even if it is a small town there should be someone having dinner there - must remember this for the future. I could not face fish/seafood that evening so ordered the Faux beef (again, not a good sign) but since they were out of the duck ("no canard, no canard!") this was the only other choice besides Soupe de Poisson ( ie. fish.) Carol and Linda got the soup. Now I assume most of you know that Linda is an adventuresome eater - willing to try things and loves most seafood. When their soup showed up they saw the following: a whole fish with skin, eyes, and tail intact floating in a grey broth. Further discovery turned up several completely uncleaned shrimp with eyes and feet, as well as baby octopus with tentacles still intact. Their reactions can be seen here - please note that Carol is not smiling with joy, but laughing at the horror on her plate. I have also included a picture of what we now know the soup should have looked like.
The next day we were off on a driving adventure to Carcassone, a fortified medieval walled city in southwestern France which was classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997. It was a fabulous fortress and was very interesting to walk around the actual castle and shops within the walled city. On the way we stopped in Homps, and walked around the town and looked at the Midi Canal. A small dog decided to join us (see pics) and unfortunately was a car chaser, who finally left us in a park without getting run over, whew!
Generally, the countryside we visited is used for growing grapes. There were vineyards upon vineyards along miles of winding country roads. The hilly terrain reminded me (Linda) of my hometown of Mariposa, California. Including the fact that the red buds were in bloom and there were lots of rocky outcroppings. It is actually the hill country leading up to the Northern Pyrenees Mountains.
It also holds a great many grottoes (caves) with prehistoric art still visible and available for us to see! We started off seeing one of the more well known caves in the area Naiux Cave
in the northern foothills of the Pyrenees near the town of Foix. This
is a cave where they still allow visitors in to see the actual paintings
(created with inks made of different plants) and charcoal drawings. They do
however gauge the carbon dioxide the group is producing and set limits
for how long we were allowed to stay in the largest chamber. When the guide started
saying things like "this was able to be carbon dated to 13,850 years
ago"and "this cave was used at the end of the last Ice Age" it was
completely mind boggling. This was a well attended tour so we were with a
crowd, all trying to see, most of the time. We decided to try to fit
one more cave in before heading back and drove across a small valley to
visit Grotto de Bedeilhac.
Grotto de Bedeilhac has a similar early history to Naiux Cave but, more recently it was used as a airplane maintenance base for the French military and later the German military during World War II. Sadly, great amounts of soil was removed from the entrance of the cave in order to allow a level place for the maintenance to work to occur. It is impossible to know the amount of archeological history that was lost because of this.
The experience was a completely different in this cave; for one thing because we were the only people on the tour (in fact we were the only ones to go on the tour all day) and because the cave was much less organized for tourists. We were lucky to have a private showing of the cave, which had paintings and drawings with brush and charcoal but also included sculptures and engravings. What little electricity that was available wasn't working and so we were on our own with four flashlights and a lot of dark. It was just fine though, our guide pointed our a number of geologic features in addition to the pictographs and other evidence of previous civilizations. Amazing!
Our trip to see the cave took us quite close to Andorra, a tiny country between France and Spain in the center of the Pyrenees. (They have the 4th longest life expectancy in the world and are the 6th smallest country in Europe.) It's an interesting little place with membership in the United Nations and is ruled by co-princes, the President of France and the Bishop of Urgell (Catalonia, Spain). Unfortunately, that passport stamp will have to wait until another day, but we did take a pic of a car license plate from there!
This part of the world is quite lovely. The towns have markets once or twice a week where local vendors come to sell their vegetables, sausage, fish, cheese and other goods. Everything seems quite easy going and most businesses close for several hours every afternoon.
We spent more time day tripping around the area: beautiful country side, lovely little towns. We particularly enjoyed Roquebrun, with its wide river and pretty hillside of colorful houses. We also encountered fascinating little stone shelters (Capitelles) which are built without any mortar, even the roof, in the traditional way that has been used since Roman times. They were used as shelter and storage by workers in the vineyards. You can see Carol exiting one in the pictures.
After a pleasant week we are off to Spain - which is detailed in Part 2 of this trip.
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