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The Milavsky RV Letters
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Camping Europe in an RV |
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Letter 12 We are back again. Before we bring you up to date, there are two things we neglected to mention that really deserves comment. First, we told you about the huge supermarkets called Auchon and Carrefours that we love to visit. Last time we were in an Auchon, we asked a manager how many cashiers there were. Of course, we asked in very primitive French, but he did understand. His answer: 65. Does that tell you how big these stores are? Second, we said in an earlier letter that city centers in Europe are more vibrant than city centers are in the US, where suburban malls take the place of city centers here. Well, we have since learned that this is not quite correct. We now realize that in Europe many cities have both. They have a lively center consisting of pedestrian-only streets that are full of branches of the same stores that are everywhere in U.S. malls. And they also have malls in commercial zones just outside the city. The malls in the commercial centers are newer and this is where one finds the huge supermarkets that can’t fit into crowded city centers. It is really more realistic to say that European cities seem to have developed both center cities and suburbs in a more balanced way than we have in the US. Now, back to traveling. After our free lunch and entertainment in the Arles’ Camargue Rice Festival, we went back to the museum to pick up our motorhome and left. Our destination was Aigues Mortes, a city that we mentioned in our last letter. This is the port city from which the Crusaders sailed to the Holy Land. We’d seen it from the road on our last trip, and thought we’d like to take a closer look. It is a large, kind of white-looking walled city with many gates, towers, and an ancient lighthouse. (Picture 1 is the lighthouse.) Spectacular on the outside, but the inside was mostly cafes and shops for tourists so we didn’t stay too long. We visited a 13th century church, walked around for a while and left. We were headed for a campground close by – but when we got to the cut-off for that campsite, the road had a chain across it and a big sign saying temporarily unusable. That’s when we realized that the rain we’d been experiencing must have added more water to the flooding we had read about two days earlier. We quickly looked up a different campsite and stayed overnight at a small one in a suburb of Montpelier called Latte. In the morning we were off to Carcassone. Those of you who received our letters from Europe in 2002 or who have read our book know that we had visited Carcassone last time. It is absolutely beautiful and truly stunning when you see the outside walls. (Picture 2 shows Carcassone.) But it does suffer from the fact that it is a huge tourist attraction like Aigues Mortes. Every building houses a shop/café/souvenir stand, all aimed at tourists. That is because there are thousands upon thousands of tourists there, looking for things to buy. We have nothing against tourists. Some of our best friends are tourists. We are tourists. But cities that live only on short-stay tourists are simply not as interesting as cities that must make life interesting and livable for their own citizens, every day for years. So even though the entire city is beautiful, we were content to walk only a couple of hours before heading back to the campground. We know we will need to be in Amsterdam to store our motorhome in a little more than a month, so we have carefully picked interesting places to stop on our way north. Next stop after Carcassone was a long way north, so we stayed overnight in a campground in a tiny town on a river. We found a description of it in our book, and it was only blocks off the road we had to travel. What the English campground guide book calls a “NH”, i.e., a night halt. Bright and early the next day we arrived in the town of Cahors, a medieval town in the Dordogne area of France. We looked for parking spaces but decided that was never going to be possible, so we drove to a campground on the opposite side of the river. At the reception deck, we asked if there was a bus near the camp that goes to the city. No, but there is a free bus. It goes to center city from the athletic fields just down the road and there is no problem with parking there. So off we went. The electric mini-bus ran every 11 minutes right to the tourist information office. This alone was enough to endear Cahors (a name which we cannot quite pronounce) to us. But there was more. Here was a beautiful medieval city without tourist shops. People actually live here. The shops were those needed by the population. It was not as stunning on the outside as either Aigues Mortes or Carcassone, but the inside buildings were just as beautiful and the entire atmosphere much more pleasant. Cahors has lots of wonderful medieval buildings, as well as the oldest (13th century) fortified, medieval bridge in France. The bridge has three towers and Roman arches. (Picture 3 is of the fortified Cahors Bridge, but the third tower was behind some trees.) We loved being there. To add to its charm, it also had an internet shop which enabled us to send out a letter. At the end of a long day, we caught the bus back to the sports complex, drove to the campground and collapsed. This area of the Dordogne contains several caves associated with the earliest residents of the area, 25,000 to 30,000 years ago. The most famous one is in Lascaux where early man painted highly stylized pictures of animals. The original cave in Lascaux is now closed because even the breath of the tourists was beginning to affect the paintings. Very faithful copies of the original paintings in an exact copy of the cave were created, and visitors now can see Lascaux II. Since we had seen that cave last trip, we were aiming for a different cave. So early the next morning we set out on a twenty-one mile side trip to the Grotte du Pech Merle. Do not even ask what the name means. No one really knows. To prevent the fragile paintings from deteriorating, only 700 people per day are allowed in. Fortunately for us, all the school children in France are in their classrooms now, and it is possible to get in without a reservation (which are sold up to a year in advance). As we got closer to the cave, we began to see several groups of back-packers hikiing. We had not seen any walkers until then. The area where the grotto is situated is impressively rocky with high hills and sheer cliffs, as well as lots of caves. (Picture 4 shows a portion of the road between Cahors and the Grotte du Pech Merle.) The Grotto is an enormous cave. It has all the usual physical properties of deep caves with the added miracle of many wall paintings which those extremely artful painters had created 30,000 years to 28,000 years ago. The Grotto’s original paintings are of animals like horses, bison, deer, aurochs, bears, and mammoths. In addition this cave also had paintings of people—a wounded man with spears in his body, and a woman. Their technique consisted of working in near darkness, filling their mouths with ground pigments like red ocher and black manganese mixed with water and blowing this “paint” onto the walls and ceiling of the cave. While some animals were created using only a few strokes, others were more complicated. And in some cases they chiseled the outlines of animals into the rock face. And these artists, like any modern artist, clearly wanted to be associated with their work. They left outlines of their hands near their creations, by holding a hand against the wall and blowing pigment at it. Photography was not allowed, so I have no pictures to show of these awe-inspiring cave paintings. But an internet site exists. Google Grotte du Pech Merle and you should find it. We’re not sure whether we walked all four kilometers (two plus miles) of the cave, because the guide spoke only French and although we had an English description of the various sights in the cave, it didn’t specify whether or not our tour covered the entire length. It was long enough for us. You had to walk to the end of the guided tour and then back because there is only one entrance area. It was up and down dimly lit stairs and ramps, past all kinds of strange looking formations, and large areas of paintings, which the guide delineated by using a laser light. Some of what he said we understood, but we certainly did miss a lot. After our visit we had our lunch and then went into the little museum on the site. By the time we watched the movie about the Grotto (sub-titled in English), it was getting late. We had to re-trace our steps to Cahors. We decided we could drive for a while longer and picked a town that had a campground listed. Souillac was on the way to our next real destination, heading north. In the morning, Ron was taking a walk around the campsite when he found something he never expected. A very new American Dolphin RV – at least a forty-footer by his estimate - with two slide-outs. Since our little RV is also a Dolphin, this was an occasion. Two young Englishmen and their wives were accordingly brought back to see a small and insignificant member of the same family of motorhomes. They did seem to respect its advanced age. To reciprocate, they invited us to see the inside of theirs as well. We passed. We told them that a tour of their huge, luxurious motorhome would greatly increase the risk of our catching a severe case of RV envy. Why take a chance on spoiling the rest of our trip? They left (on motorcycles) to see a part of France about 50 miles away to see some other caves—so-called troglodytes. These are dwellings carved into cliffs in which people currently live. We also left to begin our day’s journey to a small, medieval town named Martel (which some of you may remember from our last trip). We had found it charming before and were just as charmed this time. It is another beautiful medieval town that is not solely designed for tourists. (Picture 5 shows the entire town of Martel in a photo taken from the road.) After Martel we had a problem. There is a town in France that had been recommended to us by other campers as one of the most beautiful in France. It was miles out of our way and it had an insoluble difficulty for us in particular. It is totally built into a high cliff. and not suitable for us to walk around. We considered skipping it. Even the guidebook said that the streets were full of shops and tourists and not too rewarding. But finally, we compromised. We would visit Rocamadour, but only to view it from afar and not to try walking it. Were we ever glad we had decided to see it. Rocamadour is another WOW! But just to see that town as it was built into the mountain was well worth those extra miles. (Picture 6 was taken of Rocamadour from a panoramic viewpoint opposite the city.) Our next destination was Perigeux. We got there late in the afternoon, and chilled out for a while in a beautiful campground right on the river. In the morning, we set out to visit this town again. Another exquisite medieval town where real people live and work. Several blocks away is the remains of a Gallo-Roman town. Perigeux also is the center of the area in France famous for creating and marketing foie gras as well as truffles, those black fungi that are almost as expensive as gold. We had been here three years ago, and had seen an archeological dig that uncovered a huge Roman villa. Almost next door is the ruin of an enormous cylindrical building which was identified as a “cella” – the most sacred part of the Temple of Vesunna (a goddess we’d never heard of before). There were models of both the villa and the temple in the new museum that the architect had sited right over the ruins of the villa. The size of the villa was astounding and so was the model. After that museum, we spent the day walking through the city (and checking out an internet site). (Picture 7 shows the excavated central part of the villa with the glass walls of the museum around the site.) The three medieval towns that we really enjoyed – Cahors, Martel and Perigeux – have made us feel less charitable towards the tourist towns like Carcassone that we enjoyed last trip. Is that a sign of sophistication or exhaustion? We’re not sure. The weather has already turned quite cool. We aren’t sure if the rain and wind storms we have been experiencing are unusual or if this is what it is always like here in September. Of course, we are rushing the season to a close by having turned north just as the weather cooled. But it is quite a difference. Less than two weeks ago we were sweating and needed to carry frozen water bottles on our little expeditions. Now we need jackets! As we have traveled, we have discovered that we were wrong about another thing. We were under the impression that we had the oldest motorhome in Europe. Not true. We’ve met several people who have RV’s even older than ours! Last time we traveled on the continent, we spent a lot of time in France. Neither of us remember seeing as many motorhomes dry-camping as we are seeing this trip. Several times we have pulled into a city and found ourselves in a parking lot or a field full of RV’s parked there. We have not stayed because we prefer to be in a real campground – but it sure looks like a lot of people do this. We are beginning to feel that our trip is winding down. We’ve got a lot of things we want to see as we wend our way back to Holland, so we are beginning to feel a little pressured. But we do want everyone to know that we’re trying as many new things as we can. We simply cannot eat fast enough. Quel domage. Bye for now. Adelle & Ron Adelle and Ron Milavsky, Authors © Adelle and Ron Milavsky, 2005
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