Yesterday was museum day. Museums are kind of boring, especially if you aren’t there in person. But we did see a couple of interesting things. Here’s a picture of a Roman barge, circa 50 AD. This is the real boat, recovered from the bottom of the river. The pole you can see doubled as a sail mast (when the wind could help) and a towing mast (when going up river).

Of course wooden boats need reinforcement for added strength. This barge used iron.

The other thing boats need is a good bilge pump.

This pic shows how the knots in the rope and the disks locked into a piece of sculpted wood arrangement to get a gear.

We had a lucky and interesting experience driving up to Arles. We were on a toll road. I didn’t recognize what the signs meant fast enough, and pulled into a lane reserved for some kind of automatic E-payment. If I did this in the US, I would drive through, the camera would record my license plate, I would receive a bill, and send a check. No big deal. That’s not how they do things in France. In France, there’s a gate. And that gate stays down until you present the E-payment device. If you don’t have the device, you will sit there for a very long time. But I was very lucky, because the driver in front of me made exactly the same mistake. The people behind me started backing up, obviously disgusted at the idiot who drove in the wrong lane. When it came my turn, I put on my best “disgusted at the idiot in front of me” face and backed up until I could get in the manual payment lane.

Today, we’re off to Carcassonne, a medieval town.