Zumstegs on the Go

We spent three days in Toulouse with Mary and Gilles. Toulouse is a big city, home to Airbus (a tour guide asked us where we all were from and when Laurie and I said, “Seattle,” her immediate response was, “Oh…Boeing”). Lots of interesting things to see, a river to walk by, a canal in the middle of town, and many beautiful buildings. Toulouse is known as the “Rose City” for it’s buildings of reddish-pink brick. We enjoyed Toulouse. I’m not going to write a lot about it; just show some pictures.

Now that’s a spire! Toulouse Cathedral – all brick!
Gilles spotted this unassuming doorway in the middle of Toulouse…	…and found this beautiful little church.
This room is in Toulouse’s City Hall. Pretty nice, eh?
Here’s where civil marriage ceremonies take place in Toulouse. We know someone who was married here! William and Mathilde, Mary and Gilles’ son and daughter-in-law, were married in this room.

We love beautiful bridges.

Toulouse has a serious market!

This market goes for probably half a mile, and runs six days a week.

Cherries? We got ’em. Mountains of cherries! It’s cherry season right now; they are fabulous.

Some random Toulousienne buildings.

First floor…	…and second floor. Simple decorating ideas.

In previous years I’ve posted a couple times about bastide towns and, since we visited a few this trip, I’ll combine them into one post. A little background on these interesting towns:

In 1337 the king of France died without a direct heir to assume the throne. Shortly after, the English and the French started arguing about who should be the next king of France. Because the English monarchy actually descended from a French royal family, the English, who still controlled large parts of southwestern France, thought their claim to the French throne was better than anyone in the French royal family. The French politely disagreed and the two sides fell to fighting. For the next 116 years they fought, in three periods of war with not much happening in between, until the French gained the upper hand and threw the English out of France finally.

During much of the Hundred Years War (which should really be the Hundred-Sixteen Years War), the main fighting was done in the part of France we traveled through on this trip). During the wars, both sides built these bastide towns – more by the English – which had several characteristics:

• They were usually square, with straight roads in both directions to allow quick movement of troops from one side to another during a battle.
• They were fortified with walls and towers.
• They almost always had a main square, which contained a covered area for markets, and was surrounded by arcaded buildings.

With that background, here are a few bastide towns we visited.

Domme
An unusual aspect of Domme is that it is built on a hill and is definitely not square; most bastide towns were on flatter land. Because it is in the Dordogne region – a hugely popular tourist area – Domme has become a tourist attraction.

The Dordogne Valley from Domme. Can you imagine being in an attacking army below and looking up at Domme while your officers said, “Go get it!”

Domme was the site of some kind of “American Super-Car” gathering, as we saw 10 or 12 new Corvettes and these three Chrysler Vipers. I might point out that these Vipers, with their V10 engines, would require about somewhere around 60 cents of gas for every mile driven! I guess if you can afford a $70,000 car you can afford to drop five dollars just to get to the grocery store.

Like many popular tourist places, Domme has the tourist contrast:

Center of Domme, full of folks.

Fifty yards away, deserted.

Domme is not our favorite bastide, because it seems that its primary purpose is to extract money from tourists’ wallets.

Fources
Fources is an unusual bastide in that it is round. As with many towns of interest, it relies on tourist trade, as there is not much else to keep the town alive. Fources, though, is away from any strong tourist areas, so it has retained more of its small-town, historic feel. We liked Fources, and had a nice lunch here.

Here you can see the round shape of Fources, in its main square.
Bastides always have these arcaded buildings on the main square.
One of several fortified entrances to Fources.	From outside the walls.

Lectoure
Ok, not a bastide, but Lectoure’s church has the best church sign we’ve ever seen:

“It is highly likely that a person entering this church will sense the call of God. In return, it is much less probable that he will contact you on your phone. ” And a “turn it off” icon. Love it!

Cordes-sur-Ciel

Like Domme, Cordes is built on top of a hill, and like the other bastide towns, it relies on tourism for income, although there is quite a lot of farming in the area and I suspect some people in Cordes support that farming. However, Cordes’ main attraction for us was a startling church. The church has a beautiful and surprising interior; we just don’t see interiors like this, especially in small, rural towns.

Some more Cordes pictures:

We entered Cordes through this gate…	…and left by this gate. Only two ways in and out of Cordes, for security in the middle ages.
The hall in Cordes’ central square. Old, very old.
Intrepid travelers…

One last comment about Cordes: the town has been known as Cordes for centuries. But in its search for the tourist trade, Cordes took advantage of its position high on a mountain-top to rename itself to a more appealing name, Cordes-sur-Ciel: Cordes in the Sky. Ah, marketing…

Vianne
One last bastide, Vianne. This is a real live active town, not relying at all on tourism. I stood in the middle of the main intersection and took pictures looking down each of the four main streets that meet there.

The four fortified towers that are the entrances to Vianne – typical of the bastides.

Vianne had one other sight that brought us here: a bridge designed and build by Gustave Eiffel, he of Eiffel Tower fame. It’s likely that his company designed and built it in the 1860s or 1870s, but official histories don’t mention this bridge by name. Still, a beautiful little bridge.

Okay, that’s enough for bastides. You’re probably as tired of reading about them as I am writing about them. I’ve left out our favorite bastide, Monpazier. We stopped there for lunch and a slow stroll through town. If you want to read about our favorite, click here: Monpazier, 2016

Following up on the Gers – Part 1 post, here are some other places we visited in the Gers:

Lavardac
This small town a few miles from our base at Moulin de Bapaumes has one distinguishing feature: an amazing country market. It has everything: from live animals to mattresses (and even a car for sale). We’ve seen lots of markets and always find them interesting; this was a great one.

The country market at Lavardac .	Want to buy a nice chicken (live)? A rabbit? A guinea hen? Quail? We got ’em.
Flowers in the market, always.	Mary & Laurie checking out the goods.
A dangerous car…

I call the car above dangerous because a driver does not need a license to drive it. There’s a whole class of cars here like that. They are limited to about 40 mph and are not to be driven on the autoroute (supposedly: I’ve seen one there, driving at 40 mph where the speed limit is 75.) Even around town, they’re a nuisance. The dangerous part is this: blind? You legally could drive one of these, since you don’t need a license. So the drivers of these cars are almost always folks who, for some reason, could not get a real driver’s license. That may hint at their driving abilities. I give these things a wide berth and my full attention when I see one on the road.

Barbaste

Barbaste is another small town, with just one sight to visit, but quite an interesting site. Here’s a picture of a small structure in Barbaste:

I know you’re all yawning and saying, “Oh, yeah, another fortress. Boring!” In fact, it is kind of a fort – in this case, a fortified mill. In the 1300s, when this mill was built, only the king or his representatives could mill wheat and so the power associated with that (local farmers were dependent on that mill) was closely guarded. Hence, the mill was fortified and stocked with soldiers to maintain that power. This mill was abandoned for hundreds of years, survived and is now being slowly restored.
Next to that mill are two kind of interesting sights. The first is a bridge built a hundred years so so before the mill, so, about a thousand years ago. It’s still in use.

And one last kind of funny thing. Across a street bordering the mill is a beautiful structure. Closer examination (and a hint from Danny and René at Moulin de Bapaumes) reveals it to be a “folie’; same as in English: a folly. This beautiful structure, which you’d expect to see as the façade on an impressive building, covers up…a staircase. Nothing else.

That’s it for today. More posts coming Real Soon Now.

After our brief stay in Brive-la-Galliard, it was on to our destination, the Gers region. This region is in southwest France and although we visited just a small part on its northern edge, we enjoyed it greatly.
The impetus for this trip was mostly a book: “Duck Season” by David McAninch. Now I’m not generally a fan of the “American moves to a small town in a foreign country and learns the meaning of life” genre of books, but this one was great. The Gers is famous for the quantity and quality of the ways it serves duck and Mr. McAninch writes about the ways that ducks pervade life in the Gers: hunting ducks, raising ducks, cooking ducks, eating ducks, stuffing ducks to get foie gras, etc., etc. It all sounded interesting, so off we went with Mary & Gilles, our ever-patient friends.
Our base here was just outside the town of Nérac. From there we visited local towns but, oddly enough, had no duck – that had to wait until we visited Toulouse. But this area is beautiful, with lots of interesting things to see, and we’re glad we visited.

Moulin de Bapaumes

Our home in this beautiful area was a B & B named “Moulin de Bapaumes.” Now, I have not always been a fan of B&Bs, but we hit the jackpot with Moulin de Bapaumes; it sets the standard for what a B&B should be. Run by Danny and René, it has beautiful rooms and a beautiful setting. These two gentlemen know everything about the area and so offered recommendations on places to go, things to see, restaurants to try, and every recommendation was spot on. Honestly, I can’t praise them enough, but I can say that this previously B&B-phobe will be back to Moulin de Bapaumes in the years to come.

Laurie, Danny and René at Moulin de la Bapuame. These gentlemen could not have been better hosts!

Laurie looking out our window in the B&B

Now for some pictures of our rambles around Nérac…

Villenueve-Mezin

This town is tiny, with maybe ten houses. But it has one cool place to see, and one rather interesting house. The cool place to see:

It’s a fortress, right? Built to defend the town and surrounding area, right? Yes and no. It was originally built to defend the area, but soon after its construction, the main interior area was turned into a church. This probably occurred about ten centuries ago. For many years it fell into disuse and disarry, but a German architect, Herman Schmitz, became interested in restoring this rare fortified church and spent many summers here leading the effort. Now, the interior looks like this:

One of two chapels in the church.

The second chapel.

The architect must love Villenueve-Mezin, as he also spent summers building a home here, on the remains of a small chateau. From the street, here is the home of him and his family:

Not exactly a restoration! The building does retain original walls and some original windows, but it has been modernized completely. Honestly, it’s beautiful, and in this village, would be a place of complete calm and quiet. Here’s a view of the countryside from Villenue-Mezin.

That’s a lot to write about such a small village, but this village has some special places; we’re glad we could make the trip to see it.
More on the area around Nérac, Real Soon Now.

First stop on our first ramble: Brive-la-Galliard, in the Dordogne region. We stayed a night here to break up the long drive to the southwest, and we were glad we did stop. An old town, Brive is working to make itself attractive to folks, rather than just letting the town fade away. The first step seems to have been a common one: get cars out of the historic area. As a result, it’s easy to stroll around the beautiful buildings of the downtown area, and so that’s what we did.

A great change to downtown areas: pedestrianized streets.	Gotta love Romanesque architecture.
Cathedral in Brive.	Beautiful Church steps in the Brive cathedral.
For very skinny people only!	A building - an old building in Brive-la-Galliard.
And a relatively modern building. Beautiful, I think.

I’m not sure we’d make a special trip to Brive, but it was a nice overnight stay. Brive represents lots of French towns, with beautiful buildings and excellent restaurants; a great place to just walk around and absorb Frenchness!
Next stop: the Gers region, specifically the area around Nérac.