Our visit to Rouffignac Cave made three caves, and each was entirely different. Lascaux was overwhelming from the moment we walked in, with artists even building scaffolding to paint the ceiling. Font de Gaume had art that was just as good as Lascaux, but only a few animals at a time, and faded. We were looking at the real, 15,000 year art and it was very impressive, but not overwhelming. Rouffignac started out a lot like Font de Gaume, but as we got into the cave it became more and more incredible. The art was still masterpieces. The guide pointed something I had missed before. It was impossible for the artists to erase a line. Every piece had to be created perfectly the first time. This means only highly trained and qualified artists worked in the caves.

The most impressive part of Rouffignac is an area called the great ceiling. When the drawings were created, the ceiling was about 3 feet above the floor. This means the artists had to crawl in on their bellies, then work laying on their back, with their face almost touching the ceiling. In spite of this, each of the 66 animals is perfectly drawn and perfectly proportioned. The French excavated the floor so we could stand in the room and look at the ceiling. But nobody in prehistoric times could see more than a small part of it at once. Archaeologists believe the room was painted by 5 to 7 artists, all working at more-or-less the same time. Getting to the room was so arduous that the artists would have required a support staff to bring lamps, supplies, etc. It blew me away.

We were on the first tour at Rouffignac, which gave us time to do the hike also. It is called “Three Rivers and Three Viaducts”. The hike was nice, but not nearly as nice as the description indicated. Still, we saw some pretty countryside, an archaeological site, and some other interesting things. It would be really cool if the viaduct below were a Roman Aqueduct converted for carrying electricity. But actually, it’s a railroad bridge built in 1891.

Our hotels are a study in contrasts between yesterday and today. Yesterday, we were in a B & B. The host’s house was several centuries old. We saw the stone wall inside our bedroom, as well as the massive beams holding the roof up. The room was highly decorated and felt very comfortable. We had to drive to get anywhere. This caused us to eat snacks from the grocery store for dinner. Restaurants in France don’t open before 7 PM. I don’t like driving in the dark in France. Tonight, we are staying at a very low cost but ultra-modern hotel. Everything possible was done to save construction costs. For example, the bathroom is on a raised floor to make running plumbing easier. There was no receptionist when we arrived, the front door was locked. We received our key through a dispensing machine outside the front door. There are a number of restaurants and fast food places an easy walk from our hotel.

We’ve spent the last two days looking at cave paintings and goofing off. Thursday we visited Lascaux. The Lascaux cave is closed to the public. Instead, the French built an exact duplicate for people to visit. Entering the cave was an overwhelming experience. The art is simply amazing. Animals look 3 dimensional. They show motion and spirit. The ceiling as well as the walls were painted. The artists built scaffolding and ladders to reach the ceiling. All this was done 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. There is no doubt these paintings were very important to the people who painted them, but we don’t know why they were important.

Our cave Friday was Font de Gaume. This is the only place in Europe where one can walk into a cave and see the original polychromatic paintings. The number of paintings is much less. The ceilings were not painted because they were not suitable. And the paintings were faded. But the quality of the art was on par with what we saw at Lascaux.

Today, we will leave our hotel and drive to Limoges. Along the way, we have an option to visit Rouffignac Cave, or take a hike, or if we are very lucky do both.

(View above St. Cirq, where we had lunch)

Yesterday we drove from Toulouse to Sarlat-la-Caneda, another popular medieval town, but we didn’t come here for that. There are three caves within a half-hour drive with 20,000 year old paintings. We’ll spend the next 3 days visiting caves and touring the area.

(Castle ruins)

The interesting part of our day yesterday was a stop in St. Cirq Lapopie. This is still another medieval town, built in the 13th century and rebuilt in the 15th. It is situated on the steep banks of the Lot River, making it a wonderfully picturesque village. As part of my informal hobby of eating lunch in amazing places, we had lunch at the castle ruins, with the panoramic view above.

(An art studio)

In addition to the church, restaurants, and gift shops, St. Cirq has an artist colony with several art studios.

The weather was perfect. The coffee was very good, and the views were spectacular.

We toured the medieval walled city of Carcassonne. It appears to be perfectly repaired in every way. It was much larger than I thought it would be. Carcassonne was protected by a moat, then an outer wall, then an inner wall. The castle was inside the city and was pretty well fortified just on its own.

The strange yellow markings are plastic stripes. They were placed on the wall by an artist in honor of some UNESCO event. They look hopelessly out of place, except from just one spot between the two walls.

Of course a city this impressive would have a cathedral. This church is still actively in use, but it lost it’s cathedral status in modern times.

When we were done at Carcassonne, we went to tour Toulouse. This time most of the driving was done on France’s excellent A-highways (interstates). Our little Renault did amazingly well tooling down the road at 130 KPH (about 80 MPH). We didn’t do a lot of touristing in Toulouse. Mostly, we didn’t want to spend a second night in that incredibly expensive hotel. We spent the night in a place similar to a Residence Inn. It’s downtown, which means parking is a mess. But we have two huge rooms. One has the bath and bedroom. The other has the living room, kitchen, and dining area. The two rooms are separated by a door, which makes it easier for Danita to catch a little more sleep after I get up.

We left Arles and drove a couple of hours to a sculpture hike. This hike is deep in the countryside near the town of Mayronnes. When we went through cities, we expected to encounter narrow streets. But even the country streets between towns are narrow. They don’t bother to post signs for one-lane bridges — it’s the norm.

Our car GPS had no idea where the hike started, but it knew where the city was. When we got close to the city, we switched to Google Maps on my phone and quickly found the hike. I’m glad we decided to rent a small economy car. A tank of gas costs $50 euro (about $60). We bought the gas at a car dealer. It makes sense to me that when in the countryside, a car dealer would sell cars, auto repairs, and gas. But we were surprised to find that one can also buy wine at the car dealer. I guess this is France.

It was a nice hike, and we saw over 30 statues, all made by local artists. The trail crossed a ridge to give a panoramic view of the town below. But the most interesting thing we saw is an artist working on his latest sculpture. His name is Bozo (pronounced beu-zo). He has done several other statues on this trail.

Our hotel is a special treat. We are staying in the fanciest hotel in Carcassonne, a walled medieval city which has been totally restored. It was very windy and cool last night, and we felt somewhat tired after our hike. We decided to borrow a DVD for the evening and go exploring tomorrow.

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.

Arles is the city where Danita and I took our first ride from the back of a police car. We were lost, and having a hard time finding street names. This isn’t at all unusual for us. We saw a police car, pointed to our tourist map, and asked how to get to our objective. The police didn’t have any idea where it was. But they offered to drive us there. So we hopped in. They drove all around the historic part of town while I offered happy friendly waves to every pedestrian we saw. It took them 15 minutes to find the objective that was a few blocks away, and we all had a blast.

Where is the tower?

Yes, it was a real police car.

Yes, it was a police car

Arles was a Roman town. As such, it had a Forum, Crypts, a Colosseum, and a theater. We saw all that stuff. The Colosseum and theater were repaired and are still in use today. The Colosseum is used for bull fights. The theater is used for plays. Here’s a shot of the Colosseum as seen from out lunch table. (The potato, cheese,and ham crepe was delicious.)

The cool thing about Roman theaters is that the Romans liked cool tech toys. So did the audiences. They had ropes and pulleys to raise and lower backdrops. They had trap doors under the floor and cables from above for a dramatic entrance or exit. They use smoke and other special effects. Most fun of all, they had a retractable (cloth) roof for protection from the sun.

Arles is also the town where Vincent Van Gogh spent the last years of his life. After cutting off his ear, he was committed to the local mental hospital where he continued painting. One of his more famous paintings is of this garden, which today looks exactly as it did when Van Gogh painted it.

Aix was a bust.

There are things to see and do in Aix, but not a lot. The plan was to pick up a rental car, drive for an hour, arriving in Aix around 10. We could see some things, then drive to our hotel in Arles. This would let us stay 3 nights in Arles and spend less effort packing and unpacking. The city centers in Europe are old and are not designed for cars. We decided to use a park-and-ride lot outside Aix and take the bus into town. These were reasonable ideas, and nothing went wildly wrong. But we arrived at the Aix visitor center at 12:30.

We still had some time. We still had a list of things to see. The first was Cezanne’s studio, a 25 minute walk. We decided to take the # 5 bus. We’re sitting on the bus, with my phone navigation on so we know where to get off. Half way through the trip, I saw the bus was going the wrong way. We got off the bus and started walking. A few minutes later, the bus passed us — it was did some strange loop-de-loop. We should have stayed on the bus. No matter, we walked to the studio and paid the entry fee. We saw an old building with a bunch of old stuff. We were given a laminated sheet with very little information. If we walked 15 minutes up the hill, we could see an overview of Aix and some reproductions of Cezanne’s paintings. It was time to cut our losses. We took the #5 bus through the loop-de-loop and back to the visitor center.

There were two more things on the list. Both were 10 or 15 minute walks. Both were in different directions. We were getting a little bummed. Maybe a better plan would be to have a crepe and a coffee, and move on to Arles. My Grand Manier flambe crepe was really good, but not very wise. It set me up for some low blood sugar later on in the day.

Back at the car, I was trying to convince the GPS to route us to 5 Voltaire Avenue in Arles. In the US, the GPS would let us set the state. In France, it did not let us set the provence. After a lot of fiddling, I got the route set up, and we were off on a 1-hour ride to — well — not Arles. We drove into the city center. Went on a very wild ride through very narrow streets that nobody bothered to mark as one-way. When two cars meet going in different directions, one of them has to back up. We arrive at 5 Voltaire Avenue to see a woman working in an office with the door open to catch the breeze. We were astonished to see her. She was astonished to see us. We don’t speak French. She doesn’t speak English. After some pointing and gesturing, she showed us our error. I set the GPS for Arles city center. When we in Arles, I pulled off at a Burger King to set the GPS to 5 Voltaire Avenue. Even the Burger King has good coffee in France.

The GPS announced that I wouldn’t be able to drive there — the streets were blocked for car traffic. A quick call to the hotel told us where to park. We arrived at the hotel and learned the only free place to park was at the railroad station a short walk away. Unfortunately, a lot of people want to park for free in Arles. The lot was packed. Cars were parked on sidewalks and in spaces reserved for buses. Just cruising the lot, we had to back up, and others had to back up for us, multiple times. We could pay park on the street or in a city lot. The meters don’t announce the cost. Somebody told us it cost 50 euro to park overnight (about $70). One meets a lot of delightful, interesting people while trying to solve life’s little problems in a foreign country. Fortunately we had encountered so many delays that commuters were starting to come home. We got a legal parking space and moved into our room. The dinner was mediocre, but very well appreciated. And everything looks better with a little red wine.

We could have done Avignon in 2 days instead of 3, even with adjusting to the time change. We went to a spectacular light show in the Pope Palace called “Vibrations”. We were in the courtyard, standing on a platform that filled the entire courtyard. There were projections of amazing images, music, and as the name indicated, the floor vibrated. It was the best light show I have ever seen. I don’t have any idea how they projected the images on all four walls of the palace. I never saw a seem or a misalignment of an image.Here’s a couple of pics from the show, plus a couple of extra pics from Avignon.

Light Show

Light Show

Outside the Pope Palace

We took a free ferry to the island. On the way over, we saw this tower which was part of the Cardinal Town. I thought it was on the island, but it was much further away than it looked. We never made it to Cardinal Town.

We found out that yesterday was museum discount day. We decided to spend the day viewing the museums. The most well known landmark is the bridge from the song Sur le pont d’Avignon, On y danse. This bridge is unique for several reasons. For one thing, you have to pay a fee to go on the bridge. Once you pay the fee, you can’t cross the river, because the bridge broke apart in the 1600s and was never repaired. This may be the only bridge in the world where one pays a toll to not cross the river.

Broken Bridge

Another unique feature of this bridge is that nobody danced on it. It was so narrow that two people could barely walk by each other. It was replaced with another, wider bridge later on, but people didn’t especially dance on the larger bridge either. The bridge connected to an island on its way across the river. The island became a popular recreational area. The dancing people did was near the bridge, or even under the bridge, but not on the bridge. Another reason the bridge is unusual is that the purpose of the bridge wasn’t to cross the river, but to collect tolls from barges going up and down the Rhine river. Still another unique feature of this bridge is that it has a chapel. Most people wouldn’t think a bridge was a particularly great place to put a chapel. But the folks at Avignon just do things their own way, I guess.

Avignon Bridge Chapel

We spent quite a bit of time at the bridge, because it has a unique and interesting history. And also because we wanted a relaxing day. The other really cool thing in Avignon is the Pope Palace. Not all popes lived in Rome. They lived in Avignon from 1309 to 1374. Of course, popes need a palace, so Avignon has a Pope palace. The Avignon bridge was important because Avignon was a stinky town back in the day. The bridge let the pope and cardinals build their residences across the river where it wasn’t so stinky. Popes need is to live in their own sovereign territory, because a pope can’t be ruled by a king. In 1374, the popes were invited to leave so Avignon could become part of France.

Pope Palace

The palace was restored but not decorated or furnished. The tour came with a tablet that had a very nice program. When we entered a room, it would play a few minutes of audio. It displayed what the room looked like when the popes were using it. As we moved the tablet around the room, the display changed so show a fire place over here, a table with monks over there, a painted ceiling overhead. We weren’t permitted to enter the Pope’s chapel, but the tablet let us view the chapel as if we were inside the room. One could press icons on the display to get additional information. It was incredibly well done, and available in 6 languages. The tablet included one feature that backfired for one family. There was a game: find all 8 hidden gold coins and win a prize. We met one 3-year old boy who was inconsolable because his family found only 7 coins.

The weather in Avignon is delightful. It’s warm and sunny with a high around 25 (that’s 80 in Fahrenheit). Avignon is a wonderful city with great food, wonderful people, interesting stuff, old buildings, and everything else one would expect to find in France.