On our long drive from Biarritz to Tours, our first major stop was at a vineyard and wine cellar, Plou et fils, somewhere in the Bordeaux wine region.
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A pretty place, but more impressive as we walked into the cavernous wine-production cellar, past literally thousands of bottles of wine in various stages of aging.  Fred, who was teaching the wine-chemistry class, had been telling us on the bus about many of the complexities of the whole process.
Our tour guide, along with his dog, which he said would help drink any wine we didn't finish...
told us how the cellar had been carved out of the stone, "finished," if ever, back in the 1800s--hardly a blink of time, for he also told us that his family had been producing wine here for 25 generations, currently cultivating about 210 acres of vines.
We learned all kinds of things about the aging process, the quality of the oak barrels, the different processes for red, white, rose and sparkling wines, the tannins from both the barrels and grapes--and quite a bit more, which I may not have taken sufficient notes about.  (Strangely, I always seem to be the only one on these tours eagerly scribbling illegible little notes on folded paper.  Perhaps I just need to bring extra pens for everyone else!)  In any case, this led to the tasting room...
where even the social scientists among us collected data...
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while I fulfilled my role as Global Ambassador, and, of course, bought a t-shirt.

bob

Tuesday, May 24, our free day in Biarritz!

About half the group decided to go on an outing to San Sebastian, Spain, so they were up early, with their passports, and headed south on the bus, where they reportedly had a great day shopping.  Me, I slept in, caught up on blogging, then walked along the coast with David and Willy, watching the surfers, some active...
some not so much...
We did see the 9 advertised surfer-schools, which were 9 tents down on the beach, all in a row.  Then we found some 100+ stairs, leading up to the town itself, and of course, we never pass up climbing stairs.  But a nice view down along the beach.
The town itself was quiet, full of nice apartments, cafes, flower shops, and now and then a strange moment (note the gargoyle in the center).
Later, we hunted for supper.  We started out with Paula and Sam, but the cafes in the main square were too pricey, so we split off.  I wound up having a hot dog, "un hot dog royale," with a Pepsi.  A nice change from the elaborate meals, though odd with the big loaf of French bread it came in.  Oh, just "bread," I guess.
Toward dusk, we walked around to more of the coast I'd missed while plugged into my laptop earlier.  Away from the surfers' beach, there's the yacht harbor, and all the rocky out-thrusts which do such strange things to the current (at "our" small beach, nearest our hotel, the waves crash in along one stoney wall and swirl almost in a circle across the sand).
On one farther stone jut, there's a statue of the Virgin Mary, looking out to sea.
and Ann and Sherrie...
We stayed there til sunset, while others, back from Spain, had their own wild times on the beach--ask Patti--while Jaci became a mermaid (need to get that photo from Katie!).

bob

Ah, finally in Biarritz, there on the Atlantic coast, in the very SW corner of France.  It's almost in Spain, and you can start to see both Spanish and Basque influence here.  What are those?  Um, more color, a different personality--I don't know.

But a good group dinner--
Pretty good lasagna, plenty of wine,

a better dessert,
and a group ready to relax for a day...

bob

After Carcasonne, one of those challenges of travel, the long stretches "between"--4 1/2 hours more to Biarritz, on the bus.  A nice bus, brand new (we were the first group in it), but a bus.

Liz entertained us with stories about what we wouldn't see.  There to the south, in the Rhone River wetlands, lived "the white horses of Camargue," a phrase poetic enough that I may have to go back just to hang out in a little village there, and stare at the horses [here, read more ] and the flocks of flamingoes.
And Liz told us that this week was the gathering of gypsies, come on pilgrimage on May 24 to the south of France where Sarah, the maidservant of the Three Marys, landed--one of their origin stories.  And there is some Da Vinci Code link in this, too.

More stories--Liz talked about her old, old home in Glastonbury, where supposedly Joseph of Arimathea had brought Christianity, the Holy Grail, and a "thorn" from the Cross to Britain.  I lost the connection here, though there is some link to France.  ??

And we would later pass north of the tiny country of Andorra, ruled jointly by the bishop and the President of France, who inherited the title and allegiance when the Revolution got rid of the King, oh, a while back.  I was ready to detour, to visit Andorra, since I seem to have traveled in large circles around it several times, but alas, on we drove to the coast--occasionally with the ballet of windmills (though this photo might have been earlier in the day).

But the countryside we drove through was pretty, gradually changing from lowland farms to distant mountains, the Pyrenees, and the group got tired of history.  Liz put in a movie (new bus!) to keep us from being too cranky (all except David, who rejected all the romance)--My Life in Ruins.  Here, the official trailer. Seems like it might be a good preview of our trip to Turkey and Greece next May.

Still no plans for Andorra.
bob

On Monday, 5/23, we headed out of Avignon, headed on toward the Atlantic coast, a long, long day in the bus--something over 7 hours.  Our scheduled stop would have been at Lourdes, but the group decided instead on the walled city of Carcasonne, despite my flattering descriptions:  Lourdes as a holy shrine, set in 12 acres of trinkets, vs. Carcasonne, "a medieval amusement park."  Ok, ok, Carcasonne is yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site, but...
 [maybe a map, though the link may collapse...]

Liz told us the story of medieval Carcasonne, the center of the Cathars, a religious sect not quite Catholic that was the subject of a Crusade/genocide in 1209.  They believed in dual gods, spiritual/good and material/evil, which suggested that " the purpose of man's life on Earth was to transcend matter, perpetually renouncing anything connected with the principle of power and thereby attaining union with the principle of love, [while] man's purpose was to reclaim or redeem matter, spiritualising and transforming it" (see our Wikipedia friend).

And there was that story about the siege, where the heroine in the city fattening up a pig and catapulted it out to the besiegers to show they weren't starving.  An unfortunate statue to her now at the gate:
In any case, there we went.  Past the long line of trinket shops and cafes, winding through the narrow streets, there is the inner keep, a fine castle, but admission was 8 euros, and, alas, the torture museum was closed.

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 So, David, Willy and I went looking for t-shirts, shot glasses, and lunch.  We found a nice open-air place, where Willy finally tried a crepe, nutella-filled:
and I had a bowl of French onion soup, which David insisted I should just call "onion soup" here.

Later, walking through a shop full of ashtrays, peasant dresses, bracelets, postcards, sex-position dice, and fake swords, there was the owner's French poodle.  Which David insisted I should just call, "poodle."  Hmmm....

But a fun place, if not quite as historic as it is billed.  Lots of visitors:

While we gathered to wait for the bus.

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I think the group concluded I should have called it a medieval mall.

bob

One of the main attractions in Avignon, aside from all the soap, lavender, and cicada markets, is the Pope's Palace, built after Clement V escaped the violence in Rome in 1309.  The Palace is another of the many UNESCO World Heritage sites we kept running into.  [Gosh, do you think the UMC columns might qualify eventually?]

We had about an hour there, this time with the hand-held audio players, which would spew out information once you key in the right exhibit number.  It seemed like most of the group ran through pretty fast, while I was still standing in front of the models, trying to absorb the history of each pope, and the politics of the era.
One model of the complete structure had a number of buttons that would each light up a labeled section of the palace.  Fun stuff, though I mostly wanted to take home a model and run a D&D campaign based on the structure.  I didn't quite get all the politics sorted out, but I did like the hidden chambers in the lower treasury, where the "mad money" gold plate and extra diamonds would have been stored.  And the bits of recovered tile and stained glass, with their not-machine drawings, urged me to come home and recreate a whole industry, perhaps adding a few panes to T.O.'s office.
The winding stairs seemed meant for intrigue and assassins...
The fireplaces and kitchens were enormous.  One audio clip droned on for a full 2 minutes listing off the food supplies required in one exuberant year at the palace--all rather meat-heavy, ideal, I guess, for an Atkins-heart-attack diet.

The courtyard would have suited any number of Medieval activities, the hostage princess, the troubadours singing, the guards practicing with swords, though I have no idea if the secular world got to so use this space.
And of course, a few remaining tapestries, wall paintings, and my favorite tomb, no doubt to honor the dog:
And arches--hard to describe the scale of this palace.  Not efficient to heat, but perhaps that was not the main concern.
And there was a contemporary art exhibit in some of the lower chambers.  I didn't have time for much of that, the bus being outside the city walls, and my 5:15 deadline approaching.  But I had to stop when a bit of my favorite Japanese poet popped out from a wall--

bob

Well, we got to the small town of Cassis, on the coast, either Saturday or Sunday 22nd--can't quite reconstruct that.  It's another place with windy, narrow streets, where our megabus couldn't go, so we wound up taking another 'noddy train' down the hill into the village.

It was another of those suddenly too-hot days in France, but we walked right to the waiting boat, and after that apparently boat-mandatory cloud of blue-white exhaust fumes, we were pulling out of the harbor, cruising along the coast.  Pat had already received info that off to our right was a Michelin Star Restaurant, there with an orange roof a ways down the coast from the town.  Pat assured me this was something to be impressed with.

Past this, we moved past and through various "calanques," which our friend wikipedia tells us are steep limestone inlets, which essentially "can be considered a Mediterranean fjord." 
We also learned from our captain, via Liz's translation, that a distinct species of pine grows on this unlikely surface.
The calanques themselves provide isolated spots for boats and a few hardy, limber climbers who can reach the water.

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[and here, if I get the video to work, will be a rousing, spontaneous rendition of our new theme song, by Patti, Pat, Tonya and Ann--well, almost spontaneous, for remarkably, even out on the water, Tonya's cellphone could google the full lyrics, which begin,