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.