Oct 19--Rome and Home

Oct 19 -- Rome
The hotel, Domus Caesari, was  within 4km of the Campacino airport yet it was still 35 euros to get here last night. And it's 70 euros, or about $100 to get to Fiumincino airport tomorrow AM. It's difficult to outsmart the Romans.
 The hotel is spacious and quiet, in the hills above Rome, a fountain in the courtyard and olive and cypress trees on the  approach. I wasn't sure if I wanted to deal with Rome again but after walking the neighborhood and seeing a ghastly amount of trash along the road, plastic bags, bottles, paper, and cigarettes and not a store or a restaurant, I decided to brave the train downtown.
 Rick Steve's guide identified the National Museum as one of the places one should visit in Rome. I missed it last time and it is near the main train station. I got on the train about a km from the hotel, memorizing my stop--Pattenella. In about a half an hour I was downtown and I checked the schedule for return trips, about one per hour and walked about 500 meters between a dozen tracks and 29 separate landings, hoping I would find my way back.
The museum did have the best of the statues, frescos, and mosaics recovered in excavations of ancient Rome. The rented audio guide was informative and interesting  especially about the scarred and bloody bronze boxer and the different hair-styles on the marble busts that dated them. The famous discus-thrower is there.
After, I bought a cappuccino, a pistachio gelato and walked around the neighborhood adjoining the train station. Lots of hotels, Americans, overpriced shops, and expensive restaurants.  I probably should have stayed at a convenient location near the station so that I could have taken the 15 euro subway to the airport but the area was not very appealing.
I'm ready for a vacation from museums. I guess I'm ready to go home.

Oct 18 Barcelona

Oct 18 Barcelona
Barcelona seems twice as big as it was, when I last visited, 15 years ago. Parc Guell was crazy! There was only parking for buses. When we asked were to park a cop pointed downtown. So the seven of us girls got out and the dads went to look for 2 parking spaces. After lunch we found Gaudi's giant tile lizard and the undulating tile walls. Amazing how beautiful all the 120 year-old tile work is.
Pupeteers, steel drum players, jugglers, and guitarists played and performed.
 A dozen salespeople had tablecloths covered with scarves, jewelry, and glass pendants in the pillared area under the soccer park. Taya and Clara bought glass geckos that they promised to carefully carry as we climbed up to the top level.
At the top, Another couple of dozen youths sat, selling behind their cloths covered with trinkets. We sprawled on the snaking tile bench overlooking downtown Barcelona and the Mediterranean sea.
Sven likes to get jumping pictures and the bench was only about 18 inches off the ground so the kids stood on it and...."one, two, three...." Taya leaped forward falling on the sandy surface, her glass gecko flew out of her hands dismembering itself on the ground. No sooner than when Vicky had picked up the crying six-year-old, then the three-year-old, Clara fell off the bench breaking her gecko and skinning her knees. As we comforted the crying kids, Sven picked up glass pieces and promised to use super glue to fix them. Kids were rubbing on disinfectant and Balika was offering spongebob bandaids when a police car appeared across the field from us and all the marketers folded up their wares in their tablecloths,slung them over their shoulders, and ran the other way, laughing like it was a show they put on every day.
Balika said, "just like at the Eiffel tower--it's against the law to sell souvenirs there and every couple of hours the police come by and the hawkers all run."
Vicky and Bobby went to visit her childhood nanny and the Haakanson's drove me to the airport where we got snacks and Eilidh drew me a picture of the three of us in the back seat of the Renault and Bella drew a castle, a monkey-puzzle tree and the entrance and the exit to a secret place. I cried in the terminal. I will miss them terribly.

oct 17--Coullioure

oct 17-- Coullioure
Vicky and Bobby (Sven's best friend from Harvard) and their two girls, six and four, slept in late after traveling from San Francisco to Paris and an all-day train ride to the coast.
At 11:00 the nine of us tromped down to the market and vicky bought some of her favorite foods from when she lived in France--cheese-- mantego and mimolette; sausages--Catalan, olive, fig, Serrano, chili; and bread--whole grain and walnut. I bought two kilos of oysters. Bobby bought some of the local wine. I watched the rowing ten-man, boat races from the beach, out around a buoy 200 yards offshore and back in a thirty knot wind. Parker clad spectators cheered them on.

Back at the house, we snacked on our goodies, turned up the heat in the pool, and the kids played around in it despite the fifty-five degree weather and the persistent wind. I found some lemons on a tree and white grapes on a vine in the backyard.

While the kids warmed up in the bathtub, we poured over guidebooks as everyone wanted to go to Barcelona! Vicky was so nice; she thanked me for getting stuck so they had to an excuse to go to one of their favorite cities. So, the plan is to drive two hours to Barcelona, go to the Gaudi park in the morning and the Rambla in the afternoon before they drop me off at the airport. Whohoo! The French strike just bought me three more days with my grandkids and a bonus trip to Barcelona! That more than makes up for the two hotel rooms that charged me the full room rate in spite of my cancellation.

oct 16 Toulouse and French strike

Oct 16 Toulouse?
As we packed up to leave our gite (weekly rentals  France, gite.com ), I received an email from easy jet. My flight from Toulouse to Rome had been cancelled because of the French strike. Transportation was completely disrupted. We spent an hour chasing alternatives, none of which resolved my problem of traveling from France to Italy. We decided to try to book a train from the Toulouse station.
Balika and I stood in line for more than an hour to find out that we were in the France-only line and the other line was 2x as long and many of the trains had been canceled.  So we went to my hotel to use the Internet to look into the options. 
Meanwhile Vicky and Bobby, who would be sharing the next gite with B & S, called and they didn't know it they could get out of Paris due to the strike.  We finally found a flight from Barcelona to Rome on the 18th. So, after letting the kids jump on the hotel bed, to my great relief, I was able to cancel the next two nights at the Ours Blanc (polar bear) and i continued with the family to Couliou, on the coast at the Spanish border.  Toulouse seemed big, noisy, and scary and it has 120,000 college students who seemed to all be trying to get on trains. I was relieved to leave it. 
I was asleep in the third bed in Eilidh and Bella's room by 10:00 when Sven left to get Bobby, Vicky, and their two daughters at a nearby train station.

oct 15, Last day in Dordogne

the cemetery down the road from our gite

The graveyard that looked like a garden center

Sven Haakanson's fish-eye lens--cool!

Last day in Dordogne, we drove to a village that duplicated one from 1900 but decided that it was too expensive and too cold to enjoy so we continued onto lunch and lineuil, where the Vezere and the Dordogne rivers meet.

We threw bread scraps at some uninterested swans then climbed up more winding alleys lined with potted flowers into a ghost-town of shuttered houses.
Faced with the choice of finding another cave for which the reviews were mediocre or a garden near our cottage, we chose the latter and were pleased with our decision. The Eyrignac Manor Gardens, 3 stars on the Michelin guide, has won many awards and has been advertised as the nicest garden in Perigon. It has English, French, and Italian elements with good bi-lingual explanations for why the English trim their boxwood and yew in a somewhat less precise manner than the French, who like to see the exact contours of the rounds, squares, and cones of the boxwood from the ground floor of their manners.

Also, most of the trees at the manor and gardin were labeled which catered to my obsession with naming plants--yew, blue cedar, cypress, tulip tree,hornbeams, walnut, mulberry, acacia, and sweetgum. 

Throughout the garden was a temporary exhibit of the work of Dietrich Klinge consisting of two dozen or so  sculptures that appeared to be made of wood. They had been created from wood carvings and then cast in bronze. The bark of the trees gave texture to the primitive expressionistic figures.

A small chapel with three seats graced the courtyard. Eilidh, Bella and I sat in the chapel and when their mom and dad got their we told them, "sorry, the church is full."

at home, Sven and Balika packed while the kids and I had acorn wars  on the trampoline, got ourselves dizzy twirling on the swing, and had spitting contests with grape seeds.

Oct 13---Lascaux ll

Lascaux--

It was market day in Sarlat so we got an early start and parked near "goose square." There we took pictures of the kids hugging the statues of the portly, enlarged-liver, bronze geese. I was on a mission to buy cans of goose liver to bring home so going through the mid-evil road, I sampled goose and duck liver at a dozen booths then tried the samples of herbed goat cheese, walnut tarts, and jams. I returned to the booth at which the producer had won a bronze star in Paris and it was slightly cheaper than that of the booth that seemed to be catering to most of the American tourists.  I bought 3 cans of goose pate and 3 of duck.
Foie=liver
Gras=rich or oily
D'oie= of goose
De canard= of duck

The last booth at the market was fortuitously that of a local wine dealer and after all that foie gras I was thirsty so, even though it was only 10:30 AM, I sampled his vin rouge and his vin rose, settled on a bottle of the rose for 4.5 euros (about $6.00), to take back to the cottage.
We continued on to a children's museum and animal park where the extinct large black bulls depicted in the caves have been reproduced by reverse cross breading of modern animals.
As we walked the empty park through the pens of donkeys, goats, european deer and cows, we stumbled on a life-size, realistic wholly mammoth. A great photo-op as Eilidh posed next to it.

After lunch we had scheduled a tour through Lascaux ll. My expectations were low for this tour because it was a mock-up of the most famous of caves--lascaux. The cave had been discovered by two teenagers in 1942 when their dog fell into a hole. They returned the next day and dug into the cavern and discovered a complex of caves covered with almost 2000 images. In the twelve years that the caves were open to the public, a million people toured the caves until the paintings began to deteriorate from the carbon dioxide. The cave was closed to the public and a 15year project started in which replicas of the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery were built-- artists used prehistoric tools and methods to duplicate the paintings To see more about caves...link to... .http://www.thisfrenchlife.com/thisfrenchlife/2009/07/virtual-lascaux-caves.html

One of the horses, reproduced in the gift shop.

It was truly stunning to stand inside a room where 17,000 year-old animals seemed to swirl around us. Pictures of the art cannot duplicate the feeling of standing next to a 17 foot bull surrounded by herds of horses and deer. A couple of twe.lve foot bulls charge through the cave, a bear stalks from below, and horses manes flow as they run. In the cool, dark cave, one can almost hear the galloping of the ancient hooves. It's like being in the middle of a stampede.

Oct 11--D'ordogne

Exploring D'Ordogne. Oct 11

Thanks to Sven Haakanson jr for all the wonderful photos

Yesterday we got a slow start. Balika and Sven took a one hour walk from our cottage and the kids and I played on the swing, picked and ate concord grapes, walked through the walnut grove, and discovered the kiwi arbor on the neighboring property.

In the afternoon, we went to les Eyzies to visit the early-man archeological museum and admired the process of making flint tools, a wax Neanderthal family, a buffalo skeleton, and the life size mount of a megaceros (a huge moose-like animal).

Walking through Les Eyzies, every store had decorative geese with bows around their necks. Inside the stores, the shelves were piled high with cans and jars of duck and goose meat and liver, with and without truffles. Balika was completely grossed out by the picture of the smiling women force-feeding corn mash through a funnel to a unsuspecting goose.  It is kind of gross  but the locals seem to have a crop rotation going.  After the field corn is harvested, grass takes over the fields and the milk cows, geese, and sheep are grazed on the same fields. Some fields are in their alfalfa / clover rotation--to fix nitrogen and make winter hay.

paths around our gite

slate roofs are still common in Sarlat

We decided to find a place for dinner in the city nearest to our cottage, Sarlat.
We walked through the mid-evil part of town looking for a restaurant that our gite-owner recommended. Sarlat has been registered by the French government as a museum of architecture and the mid-evil buildings are protected from being replaced by urban-renewal. No cars are allowed on the  traverse through town. Our first choice for dinner looked open but the waiters were still enjoying their dinner and they informed us that they didn't open till 8:00 PM so we found another place at the end of an alley. We ordered 3 pizzas and one 14 Euro regional dinner. We shared the foie gras, the " well-done" beef was too raw for anyone but Sven, our waitress spoke no English so we had fun trying to figure out what the choices of sauces were and settled on "poivre vert" instead of "cepes." I was disappointed when we discovered that cepes means wild mushrooms. The creme brûlée had the prefect torched sugar crust.


At our cottage, Balika asked the kids what they wanted to do the following day. After studying the brochures, Eilidh decided that she wanted to see a cave with stalactites.

waiting to go into the cave

buildings built into the cliff face

In the morning, after 15 minutes on the trampoline, we drove to "les Grotte Des Grand Roc," a spectacular cave about 200 meters long filled with stalactites, hematite (sea urchin shaped crystals), and various colored limestone. No flash cameras were allowed but the kids took dozens of pictures in the semi-dark cave. How did we survive without digital, erasable images?
Our multiple-lingual guide explained that we were walking through a giant geode (thunder egg). That image made me feel like a microscopic entity inside one of those geodes sold in rock shops. The guide said that the cave would close for the winter on November 1. After that locals close their shutters, start up the fireplaces and generally stay home because the roads are icy and slippery.

From Beynac, looking over the D'ordogne river

Next we walked through another hilltop castle--Beynac, a 13th century castle that was the setting of battles between the French and English during the 100 years war.

After crepes, coffee creme, and oranginas we crossed the d'ordogne river and had a relaxing afternoon in "les jardins Marqueyssac." the kids ran through boxwood mazes and tried to get close-up pictures of wild peacocks.

At five we returned to our cabin and, having been in the sun, climbing hills all day, four out of five of us jumped in the unheated pool.

Oct 10 Font du Gaume cave

Caves--oct 10
We had a 1:00 PM appointment to tour Font du Gaume so we were up early to hit the grocery store before it closed early on Sunday.
Sven said that the paintings in the caves are about 17,000 years old, that the people here may have hunted themselves out of existence. "Font du Gaume" is the last of the French caves open to the public-- one hundred and fifty people per day. Balika had scheduled the tour several months ago and this was the only time available.

We wait in anticipation to actually enter a cave with prehistoric paintings

The path to the caves was through woods similar to the Willamette Valley--birds chirping in oaks, maples, poplars, and alders at the onset of fall coloration.
The cave was 130 meters long. We were able to view 5 percent of the paintings. Pictures of bison, caribou, and horses were etched and painted with magenese and iron oxide on the limestone walls. Our guide pointed out the prehistoric use of foreshortening, movement, twisted perspective, and fresco. These techniques had been thought to be discovered in historic times.

We are in the area famous for foie gras. At the restaurant, The kid's meal of burger and fries came with pate de foie gras as a starter. Balika and I shared a Casoulet--stew with white beans, sausage, and goose.
We spent the afternoon at another cave-site. We happened to be visiting during a national education week and a half dozen artists and archeologists were available to work with children. We attended workshops with the kids in making fire, tools, weapons, art, and sewing and carving implements with crude tools.

The cave was basically a south-facing overhang, 18,000 year old, near-life size sculptures of horses, bison, deer, and a bear were etched into the cave face where they could be seen from the valley and river below.

I am extremely fortunate to be making this trip and seeing these sites with my son-in-law, a Harvard educated ethno-archeologist; my daughter, a art historian who studied at Smith and St. Andrews; and two children who are so enthusiastically absorb their surroundings. At this place of ancient art, Balika's and Sven's careers and interests converge.

Oct 9 -- Avignon, Narbonne, Montealban

Moving day---oct 9

Walking the original section of the 2000 year old road

By 8:00 AM Sven had the Renault packed with all of our bags, food, gifts, and toys in preparation for the six hour drive to Sarlot. There would be no visibility out the back window for the first hour until we dropped Fabienne off at the Avignon railroad station.
Bella cried when Fab left, Eilidh refused to get out of the car, hoping that if she didn't say goodbye, Fabienne would not really return to Munich. Back in the car we all agreed that she was destined to be a fantastic primary teacher.

French dog grooming-Chien Chic

We continued west to Narbonne where we found a 12th century church. The builders had aspired to build the largest church in the world but ran into issues with removing the city walls, ran out of money, and finished a church that is disproportionately tall for it's length. Lateral ridges run up the support columns. "Classic gothic." said Balika. Inside the church, statues, art, tapestries, and towering stained glass windows covered most of the one hundred and twenty foot tall walls.





At noon a stern French woman shooed me out the front door in spite of my protestations that my family had exited into the side courtyard. "Ferme, ferme!" she insisted. I walked around the church and found my companions walking down a cobblestone alley.

A renaissance building beckoned us from across the plaza. It turned out to be an archeological museum and, needing to get more walking time before returning to the car, we explored a museum that had an impressive assortment of Neanderthal bones and objects, a reproduced 40,000 year-old bison and tiger painted cave wall, roman road markers and a Roman reproduction of the pot-bellied and grumpy-looking Greek god of wine.





Bright-colored 1st century mosaics graced the walls. At 1:00 PM the curators escorted us out of the empty museum as it, too, was closing.
We stopped at a sidewalk stand for pininis and chestnut crepes for lunch.

Bella has had enough Ingres!

Back in the car, we left the Mediterranean and headed north on the road towards Toulouse and Paris. We read in the guidebook about the Ingres museum in Montealban, halfway towards our final destination. The kids napped and Balika told us that, although she didn't especially like Ingres, he was important because he was a precise classisist. His art however, was lacking in emotion. He was historically significant because in the mid nineteenth century the French made a controversial transition from classic realism to impressionism.



We talked generally about museums in France. How artists became famous in Paris yet left their collections to their home town and and their legacy enriches the provinces.

We loved the studies of bodies and body-parts

The basement of the Ingres museum-canons facing the stairwell and a old wood torture table

None of us were crazy about the dark, flat, portraits by Ingre but we loved the pencil and charcoal studies by Ingre and his devotees. Women's body parts were intertwined with sketches of swans and horses. One 6' by 10' canvas was entirely women's breasts. Interesting.
The basement contained canons, a torture table and, lining both walls, the ubiquitous pieces of Roman marble sculptures.
We continued north through hilly rock- strewn farmland. I felt like the fertility and wine god had been left behind in Provence. The houses began to look more like German farms and the landscape more rural New England.
In the late afternoon, we reached our recently remodeled 2 bedroom country cabin. "The self-catering holiday cottage" By nightfall the kids explored the acre of lawn and found the pool, trampoline, and swings.