Category Archives: Historic Buildings

Antibes, France

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Day 55, Sunday, October 22, 2023

Antibes and the Picasso Museum is our destination today.  We take the bus instead of the train but it is quite a bumpy ride that makes drawing a bit tricky.  I think I prefer the train.  Good thing it is only a half hour ride.

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As we walk towards old town Antibes we pass aa area that has enormous hanging planters and flowerpots.  They are really spectacular.

We head for the harbour to check out the ancient ramparts and an interesting sculpture.  There are some really enormous boats in the distance as well.

These boats are docked in an exclusive area, no walking past them… so  I take a photo from the ramparts.  Take note of the white van parked by the second boat to help give a sense of scale.  

Bob had read about this sculpture by Jaume Plensa called Nomade.  It is an eight meter high figurative sculpture which is located on the top terrace of the Bastion Sainte Jaune.  It is invites interaction by its viewers, including me.

“On the terrace, facing the sea at the corner of the ring wall, was a monumental sculpture eight metres high of a squatting figure, Nomade. All these pieces used the formal vocabulary developed by the artist over the last few years, based on letters. With this vocabulary, Plensa is suggesting that, beyond its simple mission of communicating a meaning, spoken or written language can also be seen as a kind of envelope covering the matter and energy that constitute us. “Like bricks,” he says, “letters have a potential for construction. They enable us to construct thought.” ~ Jaume Plensa

Walking along the ramparts we see more boats.  This one from Bali has its surfboards mounted on the back.  I think that most surfers do not own yachts.

There are signs with information about boats for rent, little boats…

and little bit bigger boats…makes me wonder how much it costs to operate the enormous yachts we saw earlier?  and no, I have absolutely no interest at all in renting or buying a boat…just not something I would enjoy, even if had that much money..

There is a little sand beach on the outside of the ramparts, and in the background is the huge yacht and the sculpture Nomade.

Next stop is the Picasso Museum.  Nice that photos are allowed.

I am not a huge Picasso fan but this museum has lots of information explaining Picasso’s  paintings and methods which help me appreciate his work. This huge painting was painted on three cement panels that are usually used as a building material.

There is a big display of his glazed platters which are interesting.

More people take photos of these copies of Michelangelo’s sculptures than of the Picasso paintings.I spend a bit of time drawing a couple of Picasso’s altered vase forms.

Here are couple more large paintings.  I forgot to take photos of the titles…

There is another exhibit on the main floor of the museum.  Paintings by Yves Zurstrassen, but it doesn’t interest either of us so we just do a quick walk through. Outside on the patio there are several sculptures by Germaine Richler which I quite like, and two young ladies drawing in their sketchbooks.  I love seeing other people drawing.  They were deep in conversation so I didn’t interrupt them.

Walking back to the bus station we pass these porcelain cups in a shop window.  Made me smile.

The streets are narrow and we have no idea what might be hiding behind those closed shutters.

While waiting for the bus we chat with two twelve year old boys who are absolutely bursting what energy.  One of them asks me to draw him.  It isn’t a very good drawing but he is happy with it. He has a lot of hair!

As the bus is pulling away I tap on the window and his friend looks up so that I can snap a photo.  Too bad I missed getting a photo of Emin.The bus ride home was even rougher than the one coming.  We are travelling on different streets because of all the one way streets in Cannes.  I definitely prefer train travel

Nice, France

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Day 54, Saturday, October 21, 2023

We catch the train to Nice this morning. We are both happy to be sitting on a train instead of driving and navigating.  It is a nice change and Bob can watch the scenery go by instead of concentrating on driving.

I draw on the train. I feel out of practice but it is still nice to be drawing…I haven’t done nearly as much of it as I had hoped to this trip.The Nice train station is really big, clean and airy.

It is a short walk from the train station to the main tourist area by the beach.  We stop at a park for our lunch, and I wonder if the water is from yesterday’s big rain…or if it is a fountain?

A couple minutes later I have my answer.  These two young boys had the best time playing in the water jets.

We laughed at this big dog who jumped and tried to bite every jet of water he passed.  He was having such fun.  There were such neat reflections too.

This very large sea gull was eyeing our lunch, just hoping a few crumbs would fall his way…I’m afraid a few did…who could resist that gaze?

After lunch we visit the Cathedral of Saint Reparata., which is a National Monument.  It is very ornate and in great shape…no peeling paint here.  

The flower market is beautiful and the prices are very reasonable.

We try some socca. It is a thin chickpea bread that is sprinkled with pepper.  We have to wait a few minutes for a fresh pan to arrive (it is brought hot from the ovens in a wheeled cart) and it is delicious! It is also a bargain at just 3€ for a huge slice.  I am going to have to try making this at home.

Even though we have just had lunch, and socca, I am craving a cassis (black current) sorbet from Fenocchio’s, a world famous ice cream shop. They have 94 flavors of  ice creams and 35 of sorbet, but I stick with my favourite.  

After my sorbet we walk towards the beach.  

Nice has a pebble beach, and lots of sun worshippers.  I stay at the beach to draw some of them and Bob goes for a walk and climbs to two viewpoint.  There is one on top of the cream round structure in the distance and another higher up on top of the hill.

I take a photo of someone who I think is Bob…and he takes a photo trying to find me on the beach.  Do we think alike?

This is definitely me, I am sitting right beside the two rinse towers…and I get a light spray every time someone rinses off!  I was settled in by the time this happens the first time so I decide to stay put, in spite of the occasional mist of water that floats my way.

I am happier with my beach drawings.

This fellow was sitting beside me and he was very brown.  He was also wearing black underpants, which appears to be a common thing here.  People are not shy about changing on the beach, women pull off their tops and bras to change into their bathing suits and I saw lots of men just wearing underpants as their bathing suit.  There were a few topless women as well…it is the French Riviera after all.

We do a bit of window shopping, or as they say here, leche-vitrine, which translates to lick the windows!  I have had a couple treats here, but gluten really doesn’t agree with me so I have to content myself with a bit of window licking!  Oh and did you notice the prices?  

We stroll along the boardwalk, people watching and enjoying the sunshine…

but the sun is getting glow in the sky and we head back to catch our train.

Bob notices something strange about this building… Here is a clue.

Yes, the whole side of the building is a giant mural!  We pass this interesting fountain…

and there are seven of these statues high on poles above the street.  Google tells me that they were created by Jaume Plensa, a Spanish artist who specializes in monumental art.

They represent the seven continents and the communication between the different communities of today’s society. They are titled “Conversation à Nice”and they are illuminated every night, with slowly changing colours.  Too bad we won’t see that but it is a long ride home.

We were in Nice over 40 years ago and visited the Matisse Museum.  I was hoping to visit it again today, but it closes during the noon hour, and then we just ran out of time.  I am OK with not visiting so many museums this trip, there are so many other things to do and only so much time.

Carcassonne to Cannes and The Fonsernes 9 Locks

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Day 49, Monday, October 16th, 2023

Today we travel from Carcassonne to Cannes.  It is a 4 1/2 hour drive if we use the toll highway and 7 1/2 hours without so we decide to pay the tolls.  We make a side trip to Beziers to visit the Fonsernes 9 Locks.  On our way there we drive by a very strange design on Google maps… I wonder if it might be some sort of irrigation system?

A bit of research solves the puzzle.  Who knew?

‘The Étang de Montady, or Pond of Montady is a drained pond or lagoon.. It was built by monks and wealthy Béziers landowners during the second half of the 13th century. The Étang de Montady was drained to provide farmland by making radial ditches from a single center point out to the extremities.  The water flows to this center point and is then drained by sixteen vertical shafts to an underground culvert.’~ info from Wikipedia.

It was a bit of a challenge to find the locks.  First of all we drove to the town of Beziers where we thought we would find the locks, but there were no locks in sight.  We did find a spot to have our lunch though, overlooking a pretty river and the Cathedral Saint-Nazaire.

We check at the location again and this is what google maps tells us!  Really??  We need to get from the blue arrow to the red pin…and we do it!  Pretty impressive navigating and driving I think! I wanted a photo of this pretty bush covered with orange berries, and Bob hams it up by giving himself an orange moustache.

The Canal du Midi connects the Mediterranean Sea to Toulouse.  It has 360 navigable kilometers and there is a drop of more than twenty meters from this location to the town of Beziers.  The locks were built in 1676 to deal with that change in elevation.

We watched these two boats make their way through the locks.

The water level begins to lower…as the water pours into the basin below.

Soon the water levels in the two basins are equal and the lock gates open…

and the boats advance to the next basin and this process is repeated 7more times.

This boat with four couples from South Africa barely has room to squeeze through the open gates.

The 9 locks of Fonseranes have a total of 8 ovoid-shaped basins and 9 doors and in 1996, they were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as is the entire Canal du Midi.

At the bottom of the locks there is a gate that appears unused for some time.  It has grown a water garden on its backside.

Back on the highway we pass through yet another toll booth.  This one is pretty big.  The crazy thing is that on the other side there are no lanes.  Once you pay your toll the gate goes up and all the cars need to merge back onto the highway.  It is kind of crazy.

Bob says he can tell we are getting close to the French Riviera because there are expensive cars on the road.  A Lamborghini costs anywhere from $221,000 to more than three million dollars!  I can’t even imagine driving a car that is that expensive.

The turn off to Cannes is a bit convoluted…we have had a lot of strange routes on this trip.

We check into our next Airbnb…only this one has palm trees and a view of the ocean in the distance.

 

 

Montolieu, Village of Books

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Day 48, Sunday, October 15, 2023.

We are on our way to Montolieu which is known as a Book Town.  I love driving down these pretty.tree lined roads.

“The happy story about this village, with 800 residents, and books, would not have been written without the desire, charisma and enthusiasm of Michel Braibant, a Belgian bookbinder who was living in Carcassonne, who sadly died just two years after his lifetime mission was completed in 1992. Aware of the concept of ‘book towns’ in Europe, he decided to create a new Book Village in Montolieu, which would be home to bookshops and craftspeople, as well as a conservatory for Book Arts and Trades.”   ~ Carcassonne Tourism Booklet

We find a bench in this little park next to the Saint-André church for our picnic lunch.

The inside of Saint-André is well preserved…

with lots of decorative paintings in the chapels.  But take look at those pews in the photo above….they were most uncomfortable!

We are at the Museum of Book Arts and Crafts when it opens its doors at 2:00.  This display of 1,100 years of handwriting was interesting.

There were many different types of print making machines and printing presses, most of which I had never heard of.  This Linotype machine uses hot metal injected into a mold made by ‘typing’ on all those keys to make lines of text, which was much faster to use than hand setting individual lead type letters.  After they were finished printing the type would be melted down and reused.  Quite ingenious.

A little film explaining lithographic printing brought back memories of my university days and all night printing sessions!  Bob used to help me with these printing sessions, so he found it interesting too.

Now, this made me feel rather old!  This Gestetner machine is just like the one I used when I first started teaching way back in the ’70’s.  It was messy and slow and the machine was very temperamental.  This is what we used for handouts before photo copy machines were in common use.

This large paper cutter is from the late 1800’s

We spend an hour and a half in the museum and when we leave, the bookstores that were closed for lunch are now open.  There are 15 bookstores in this tiny town and they only sell second hand books.  

Most of them have bins of books out on the street to entice customers.

A peek inside one of the bigger bookstores.There are some interesting book themed signs, although we are not sure what this stake of burnt looking books is supposed to represent.

Another book sculpture….seems staked books are a bit of a theme? I do feel a bit sorry for French children.  This is a typical French school playground. Cities and towns have few areas where children can run and play on grass.  Most parks have signs to keep off the grass, if there is even any grass!  I think because the population is so dense, that if people were allowed on the grass it just wouldn’t survive the heavy use.

These old houses have very thick walls.  New windows are installed here but look at how deep set they are.

We sit for a while watching these Pétanque players. They often take this game quite seriously and they are very good players.  We have to laugh though when one of the players takes the little target ball from another team and hides it.  They were just like young boys playing keep-away, passing the little ball from one to the other all the while exclaiming loudly that they didn’t have the ball at all!  Too funny.

More tree lined streets on the drive home.  I will miss these beautiful trees when we leave.

Caunes-Minervois, and Brousses, France

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Day 47, Saturday, October 14, 2023.

Bob has been doing a fantastic job as tour director.  He has found two little villages nearby that look interesting, Caunes-Minervois, which is known as the Red Marble Village, and Brousses, which has a working paper mill.  First stop is the Red Marble Village.  We find parking along a dry river bed and and a walkway with lots of red marble sculptures.

The sculptures are quite large…however this poor fellow has lost his horns.

We walk into the town and turn the corner to find this lovely little park with an old fountain and the biggest Sycamore trees…or at least that is what I thought they were. The sign says that they are 200 year old Plane trees.   I do a bit of Googling and it seems that a Sycamore is a type of Plane tree or maybe a Plane tree is a type of Sycamore?   It isn’t clear but I am not going to spend any more time trying to figure it out.  Guess I need to start calling these trees Plane trees.

This is quite a pretty little village, with flowering Morning Glory vines, 

and lots of narrow streets. 

We had stopped at the tourist information and the walking map we picked up led us past this magnificent marble horse head.  Of course I needed my photo with this one.

One interesting thing we saw was a couple being shown a very old, run down looking house by a real estate person (the man walking towards the doorway). Seems like they were seriously thinking of purchasing…it didn’t look very appealing to me, but?

Our walking tour soon leads us back to the square with the ‘Plane’ trees. 

We follow the tourist map to this hilltop view of the valley and the village and do our best to find the trail to the red marble quarry, but have no luck.  It certainly isn’t well marked, and the trail just seems to die out. We can see the backside of the quarry which is a huge long pile of stone rubble along the road, but we don’t see any way to go further. 

We go back to the car where we have our lunch and then on the way back to town stop at a little “marble garden” to see several more marble sculptures.

On our drive to the paper mill we pass the ruins of three castles.  There is a walking trail  but it looks a bit more strenuous than we thought so we decided to keep driving to the paper mill in Brousses.

It is a lovely drive through vineyard after vineyard…

with hills off in the distance.  I can’t help but think that owning a vineyard must be an awful lot of work and not nearly as idyllic and romantic as it is often portrayed in movies and novels.

We stop to try to find out what this strange machine might be.  There are several  buildings at its base, but no sign or explanation.  Both wheels are turning slowly…maybe someone knows what this is?

The machine above was located right next to a huge solar panel farm and the ground is littered with these tiny white snail shells, but no sign of any live snails.

It took us a while to find the paper mill.  We had the wrong spot pinned on Google maps but we eventually sorted it out.  The Moulin à Papier, or Paper Mill in Broussess wasn’t what I was expecting.  It used to produce paper commercially but now the granddaughter runs the mill which has been in the family for seven generations.  They now make paper by hand using pretty much the same process that I use back home with our Paper Arts Guild.  After a sheet of paper is made it needs to be couched  (pronounced “cooched”)  or transfered to another surface. Here they have been couched onto synthetic interfacing, then pressed and hung to dry in the rafters. Every year, artist Catherine Cappeau makes a collection of paper dresses, which you can see on display in the paper mill.

This huge old Hollander is no longer in use today  It is probably five times a large as the one we use in our guild.  This machine is used to beat the fibres to make the paper pulp.

The Hollander in use today can be seen behind the hanging sheets.  This is the area of the mill that is used for paper making.  There are only two papermakers who work here today.  They use a lot of recycled cotton cloth, mostly blue jeans and bed sheets. The only coloured paper they make comes from the colour of the cotton cloth that is used to make the pulp.  The material is cut into small pieces and then processed in the Hollander.  Interestingly, they also use horse and elephant dug to make paper as well.

Now this is a press!

There is little store here, where paper, handmade books, cards and other paper related items are sold.  I think that most of the mill’s income likely comes from the tours they offer several times a day, every day except Christmas and New Years!  They are set up for school tours as well.  It was interesting, and there was a lot of equipment that was in use 100 years ago when this mill was in full operation.  However I didn’t really learn anything new, other than our Guild members back home makes really good quality handmade paper and we don’t charge nearly enough when we offer items for sale!

Today it is the last paper mill in operation in this area.  There were six paper mills here in 1845.  This millstone grinder, with its 3 tonne stones used to grind 300 kms of recycled paper fibres a day in 1954!

There is a bridge over the Dure River and a little picnic area.

It is really pretty location.

There are some interesting clouds with shafts of sunlight on the drive home.

Carcassonne, Friday 13th…

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Day 46, Friday, October 13, 2023.

Bob decided he does not want to drive on Friday 13.  I didn’t know he was so superstitious!  That works for me.  I am happy stay put for a bit.  We had originally planned a couple day trips from Carcassonne: to Albi to visit the Toulouse Lautrec museum and to Toulouse for a tour of the AirBus factory.  That isn’t going to happen now as I’m not feeling up to two long days of travel and sightseeing.  Too bad but it is what it is.  So I have a quiet morning and Bob goes exploring. He climbs the hill to visit the back side of La Cité.

He walks over to the cemetery we saw in the distance yesterday.  We both enjoy visiting old cemeteries.

On the way to La Cité he walks along a wall covered with a medieval style mural spelling out the name Carcassonne.  We saw this at the end of street when we walked to La Cité yesterday but didn’t look at it then. I was unable to find out any information about this, which is a shame. It is really quite lovely.,

In the late afternoon we both go for a little walk.  I find more gargoyles, well…actually Bob was the one who spotted these.

We go into Église Saint Vincent and… discover that we can climb the bell tower for just 2.5 euros!  I’m not wanting to do it today but I hope we can get back another day.  We have climbed a lot of bell towers on our other trips, but so far not a one this time.

The old city in Carcassone has a lovely big open square with a fountain and lots of restaurants and cafés around its perimeter.  There are lots of people sitting outside enjoying the lovely evening.

I had to get a photo of this huge old Sycamore tree.  I wish they would grow back home.  Our winters are just too cold.

Shop windows are starting to display Halloween items.  These creatures are all made of chocolate.  We have seen so many closed shops, restaurants and galleries.  Every block in this old part of town, which is frequented by tourists, has at least one or two shops that have shut down.  On some streets almost every second shop is closed. I am pretty sure this is because of Covid.  It makes me quite sad.

 

Medieval Cité in Carcassonne, France

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Day 45, Thursday, October 12, 2023.

I’m feeling bit better this morning so we go visit the medieval citadel called la Cité.  It is a half hour walk and we pass a church on the way that has incredible gargoyles.  I love gargoyles.

I thought this one was particularly interesting. This is one of the entrance gates to the old city of Carcassone.

The medieval city, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has 52 towers and 2 ramparts.  Bob is standing beside a sculpture of Dame Carcas who ruled the city when it was attacked by Charlemagne in the 8th Century.   After being under siege for five years, there was only a sack of grain and one pig left to eat.  Dame Carcas fed the sack of wheat to the pig and threw it over the ramparts at the enemy, who thought that they must have a lot of food left if they could throw it over the walls, so they called off the siege and left. Dame Carcas had the bells of the city rung in victory, “Carcas… sonne” means  “Carcas is ringing”.

This is the massive entrance past the outer ramparts into the Cité.  This citadel has two sets of walls and two ramparts for protection.

and I am standing at the entrance to the residence of the ruling family built inside the fortress in 1130.

Here is another view of what is really a fortress within a fortress.

Our visit starts with a walk along part of the ramparts overlooking an interior courtyard…

and continues through some of the buildings and towers.

These wooden additions to the ramparts allowed soldiers to attack the enemy from above.  There are holes in the floor to allow attack from above on anyone trying to enter the fortress.

I was expecting to see furnished rooms, similar to our visits to the chateaus of the Loire Valley but any rooms we walk through are unfurnished.  A couple room have sculptures that were removed from Saint-Nazaire Church during the restoration of this walled city in 1846 and placed here for preservation.  I particularly liked these carved heads that were part of the exterior cornice.  They are all smiling cheerfully.This is mostly an opportunity to see the fortifications that make this citadel so unique.

I love all the colours on this old tiled roof.

From the ramparts we can see the path we will be taking when we leave the citadel, however we found a set of stairs near the beginning of this long ramp that is a much shorter route.Carcassonne  is now considered to be the largest and best conserved medieval fortress in Europe.  It is impressive with its set of double walls and ramparts.  Both sets of walls and the area between them can be seen in this photo.

This one tower looked out of place, it was built with different stone blocks and had a different look that the rest.  

The Saint-Nazaire Basilica has an outdoor theatre that was built where the cloister once stood.  It is just visible behind the church and has 5,000 seats and is in use for productions every summer.

We sit for a while inside the church listening to beautiful cello music.  I think the musician just liked the acoustics…he played several songs and then just got up and left.

On a plaque outside the church is a reproduction of drawings of some of the church’s gargoyles drawn in 1858.  I guess I am not the only one who likes gargoyles!

On our way home.

 

Carcassonne, France

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Day 43, Tuesday, October 10, 2023.

The first day after a travel day is often a stay at home day for me and I certainly needed that today. I have been dealing with a headache since we arrived in France and today it got a whole lot worse so I am happy to stay put.  Bob went our this afternoon to check out Carcassonne and find a grocery store.  Here is his first view of the medieval Cité, which we will be visiting while we are here..

Carcassonne, France                                                                                                   Day 44,  Wednesday October 11, 2023

I made an Osteopath appointment for this morning.  It is only a ten-minute drive but even navigating for that long is not easy the way I am feeling.  I feel most comfortable with a female osteopath and have had good luck with treatments that I have had on holidays in the past.  My osteopath today is very gentle, she says everything in my head and neck was ‘blocked’ and that I should start to feel better in a few hours.  We head home and I take it easy the rest of the day.

Sarlat to Carcassonne, France

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Day 42, Monday, October 9, 2023

We have a long drive to Carcassone today so we are up early.  Bob moves the car closer to our apartment so we don’t have to carry everything for three blocks, and no one is even up and about yet.  We have our breakfast and evening meals at home so we have accumulated quite a few groceries, along with our other luggage.

You can just make out the butcher’s stand on the street right beside the entrance to our apartment in the lower left corner of this photo.  He is the first merchant to open his doors, usually by 8:00 am and he is open until 8:00 pm, or even longer if there are still people on the street…and he works every day of the week!  When I told him that he works too hard he said only until today, then he gets two weeks holiday.

This is the paid parking lot near our apartment but it gives us an hour free time.  More than enough to load our car and get on the road.  I do love the Sycamore trees that we see everywhere in France.  They are magnificent, so huge, and they have the most interesting bark that looks like camouflage.  I have no idea how they survive in the middle of a paved parking lot… they can’t get much water.

It is a 3.5 hour drive to Carcassonne and we had planned to detour to Albi to visit the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec.  Lautrec was born in Albi and this museum has artwork that can only be seen here. However we didn’t even think about museums being closed on Mondays when we planned our bnb stays, so the museum is closed.  I am quite disappointed as I was really looking forward to seeing this artwork and especially the large  collection of Lautrec drawings that are in this museum.  Of course other museums we were interested in Toulouse were also closed so we decide to just drive and get to Carcassonne a bit earlier in the day.

We have seen some interesting bathroom signs on our travels, this one made me chuckle.

As we drive south we start to see the odd cypress trees, which makes me think of Vincent Van Gogh and all the cypress trees he painted.

It is always an adventure, walking into a new Airbnb and checking it out…is it going to be what we were expecting?  So far we have chosen well and not been disappointed.

 

Canoeing on the Dordogne River, France

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Day 41, Sunday, October 8, 2023

it is our last day in Sarlat and we are going for a canoe ride on the Dordogne River.  It took bit of doing though.  The first company we drove to was closed for the season but they didn’t bother to put that on their website.  We see a sign on the road for another company, and it says that they are open.  We go there and yes, they are open, just not at this location.  We give up and decide to drive La Roque-Gageac and walk around the town. I notice another canoe company near the river and before we know it we are in a canoe on the Dordogne River.

It is a beautiful day, +28 C, and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.  We pass houses built into the cliffs at Cénac-et-Saint-Julien.

The river is calm with just enough current to make paddling easy.

It is so peaceful and…

we see swans in several places along the river.There is the prettiest green seaweed and I see fish, Lots of fish, little ones and then some really big fish with whiskers…catfish? They particularly like hiding in the seaweed.  I keep showing them to Bob but he doesn’t see them.  I think he thought I was making up all these fish I was seeing until he took off his polarized sunglasses and then he can see the fish too.  He even gets to see one of the really big ones.  

We are having such a great time!

We pass three bridges and three villages with castles on our two and a half hour trip. This is the bridge at Vézac.

When we stop for our picnic lunch just before Vézac, these three sweet kids come down to the river bank to play.  I give them a plastic container to use as they are trying to build a dam on the side of the shore.  The little girl in the blue dress comes over and speaks very quickly to me and when I tell her I didn’t understand as I only speak a bit of French, her big brother comes over and very slowly and clearly tells me that it was very kind of me to give them the container and she was saying thank you.  When we  got back onto the river they waved to us and called out au revoir!

We pass ‘pirate’ tourist boats…

Beynac-et-Cazenac is another town built into the rock hillside…

and now we have passed Castelnaud-la-Chapelle.  We are nearing the end of our trip. But first we pass two of these strange half built bridges.  It doesn’t look like they plan on completing either of them although the bridge with a road bed is on both sides of the river and just has one section missing.  We wonder why.

Here is the last of the three bridges that we pass on our trip.  Our pickup point is a kilometre past this bridge.  We pull in and a short time later two vans come to pickup us and the canoes. We spent the time waiting for our pick up visiting with some people from Australia and Switzerland. We are so glad we were finally able to find a canoe rental company that was open for business.  Although I must say that both the employees we dealt with were rather rude and certainly not very pleasant.  This is the first time we have encountered anyone on this trip who wasn’t pleasant and helpful.  It didn’t matter though, we had a wonderful afternoon on the river.

When we arrived back in La Roque-Gageac Bob wants to explore the town but I am tired and sit in the shade at a little park while he goes exploring.  I draw a few of the people sitting around me while I am waiting.

I think it was a good thing I didn’t go with him as there was a lot of uphill walking.

Bob climbed up towards the troglodyte (cave dwelling) fort set in the cliffs 40 metres above La Roque-Gageac.  It is the remains of the 12th century fort that is still standing. The strong defensive position of La Roque-Gageac and this fortress meant that it held an important strategic and defensive position in the area.  Seems that there was an awful lot of fighting and defending one’s home way back then.Another view from the streets on Bob’s walk, and of the ‘pirate’ tourist ships.

On the way home we detour to visit Domme, another of France’s prettiest towns.  We hit detours and it took a bit to finally find it, but the view from this town was amazing.  We watched several hot air balloons flying high above the valley.  On was very very high, much higher than I we thought hot air balloons usually flew.  It was probably twice as high as this one! We bought some refreshing sorbet and just enjoyed the view before heading home to Sarlat to pack.  Tomorrow we are on our way to Carcassonne.