france travelogue II: traveling
Aug. 30th, 2025 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishWednesday 8/13: The first day of getting up early and driving a lot. Unsurprisingly, also the first day where the stress started getting to me. We all woke up stupid early, cleared out of the Paris apartment, and picked up rental cars at Orly airport: Steph's brother and family in one smaller car, Steph and me and Gemma and Steph's parents in a larger one. I can't speak for Dan's car but ours was unpleasant in several ways: the climate control was only semifunctional, the cruise control didn't, and in general the whole thing was far larger than any car driven on French city roads needed to be.
The heat wave crested in Paris that day, which did not improve anyone's mood. (It then proceeded to move to the south of France, mostly following our route.)
We attempted to use the onboard navigation to get us to a coffee shop and then Versailles, which did not work and ended with our car separated from the other. (This, too, will become a recurring theme.) Eventually we made it to Versailles and got coffee at a Starbucks there. We then got disoriented trying to get into the palace at Versailles via the gardens, and took several wrong turns trying to get re-oriented, to the point where we were racing the clock trying to get in before our tickets expired. Thankfully we made it. I was only moderately snappish at other people's inability to read maps and refusal to just bloody listen to me.
My impressions of Versailles: overcrowded and overgilded. After about the third bedroom of one of Louis XIV (XV?)'s daughters I had hit my limit. I spent most of the remaining time indoors muttering to myself about how it was a wonder any of them survived the guillotines to be involved in a Restoration at all.
We tried to see more of the gardens afterwards, but had run out of time and cope, what with the five-hour drive ahead of us. Instead we headed off to Nantes. Between the utterly neutral-coloured sky, the mostly-incomprehensible road signs, and the unfamiliar car models, driving (passenging) through France was the most extended waking-dreamlike state I've had.
Thursday 8/14: We wandered Nantes for a bit in the morning, and then had another luncheon with different, and substantially more, distant family. I think there may have been a couple of dozen people all told. More delightful people, more lovely conversations; no complaints, no particular notes or insights. Other than 'desserts with light cake, whipped cream, and fresh berries' are ideal for warm days.
After that we piled back into cars and drive some six hours to the tiny town of Sarlat. Turned out Sarlat was having some sort of festival and was packed to the gills with people, which made finding dinner more of an adventure than it needed to be.
Friday 8/15: Ancient art! We started at Cap Blanc Rock Shelter, the largest and perhaps only-open-to-the-public known extant example of 'monumental prehistoric sculpture.' It's not a cave, it's just a rock overhang, though it's since been enclosed to avoid wear from the elements. So, I entered at one end of a long dim room with a natural limestone/dolomite face along a long wall, with what light there is on that wall. And I noticed that there's some interesting texture to the wall, a rock column with a pleasant gentle curve. Then suddenly that column resolves into the back legs of a horse, and there's the rest of the horse... and the entire rock face has been carved like that, mostly horses but with a few aurochs and bison and what I maintain is a wolf taking down a reindeer.
They've found traces of pigment, suggesting that the horses were painted red, and would have been visible from miles away. And as the sun set behind them, the changing shadows would have suggested movement in the herd of horses. Absolutely stunning.
Then off to Lascaux IV, a replica of (most of) the original Lascaux cave that's been closed to the public for some fifty years. I advocated for visiting Lascaux II instead: II is also a replica but is more of a move-at-your-own-pace traditional-museum experience, where IV is a guided tour through the replica and then a bunch of interactive exhibits. I'm willing to concede that IV was the right call for certainly the kids and plausibly for everyone else as well. For me, the guided tour felt rushed (understandable, they want to get as many people as possible to see the 'actual' paintings) and the interactive exhibits weren't as good as reading placards. But it was still an experience well worth having.
(Of note: the Catacombs tour had an 'audio guide' that also had transcripts. Versailles and Lascaux, and every later audio guide, lacked transcripts, at least as far as we could find, making them much less useful for me.)
That evening Steph and I walked into Sarlat to acquire dinner for everyone, and had an enjoyable ramble around the town. The French countryside is chock-full of these centuries-old tiny towns, with narrow twisty streets and stone houses and at least one monumental church. Also, often, a memorial to 'martyrs de la Libération' from the mid-twentieth-century. Lest we forget. This is basically catnip for me; I am happy to wander and get not-quite-lost indefinitely among interesting buildings and streets and gardens. Paris does this as well, of course, though quite differently.
Next: Gorges du Tarn, the Camargue, Marseille.
The heat wave crested in Paris that day, which did not improve anyone's mood. (It then proceeded to move to the south of France, mostly following our route.)
We attempted to use the onboard navigation to get us to a coffee shop and then Versailles, which did not work and ended with our car separated from the other. (This, too, will become a recurring theme.) Eventually we made it to Versailles and got coffee at a Starbucks there. We then got disoriented trying to get into the palace at Versailles via the gardens, and took several wrong turns trying to get re-oriented, to the point where we were racing the clock trying to get in before our tickets expired. Thankfully we made it. I was only moderately snappish at other people's inability to read maps and refusal to just bloody listen to me.
My impressions of Versailles: overcrowded and overgilded. After about the third bedroom of one of Louis XIV (XV?)'s daughters I had hit my limit. I spent most of the remaining time indoors muttering to myself about how it was a wonder any of them survived the guillotines to be involved in a Restoration at all.
We tried to see more of the gardens afterwards, but had run out of time and cope, what with the five-hour drive ahead of us. Instead we headed off to Nantes. Between the utterly neutral-coloured sky, the mostly-incomprehensible road signs, and the unfamiliar car models, driving (passenging) through France was the most extended waking-dreamlike state I've had.
Thursday 8/14: We wandered Nantes for a bit in the morning, and then had another luncheon with different, and substantially more, distant family. I think there may have been a couple of dozen people all told. More delightful people, more lovely conversations; no complaints, no particular notes or insights. Other than 'desserts with light cake, whipped cream, and fresh berries' are ideal for warm days.
After that we piled back into cars and drive some six hours to the tiny town of Sarlat. Turned out Sarlat was having some sort of festival and was packed to the gills with people, which made finding dinner more of an adventure than it needed to be.
Friday 8/15: Ancient art! We started at Cap Blanc Rock Shelter, the largest and perhaps only-open-to-the-public known extant example of 'monumental prehistoric sculpture.' It's not a cave, it's just a rock overhang, though it's since been enclosed to avoid wear from the elements. So, I entered at one end of a long dim room with a natural limestone/dolomite face along a long wall, with what light there is on that wall. And I noticed that there's some interesting texture to the wall, a rock column with a pleasant gentle curve. Then suddenly that column resolves into the back legs of a horse, and there's the rest of the horse... and the entire rock face has been carved like that, mostly horses but with a few aurochs and bison and what I maintain is a wolf taking down a reindeer.
They've found traces of pigment, suggesting that the horses were painted red, and would have been visible from miles away. And as the sun set behind them, the changing shadows would have suggested movement in the herd of horses. Absolutely stunning.
Then off to Lascaux IV, a replica of (most of) the original Lascaux cave that's been closed to the public for some fifty years. I advocated for visiting Lascaux II instead: II is also a replica but is more of a move-at-your-own-pace traditional-museum experience, where IV is a guided tour through the replica and then a bunch of interactive exhibits. I'm willing to concede that IV was the right call for certainly the kids and plausibly for everyone else as well. For me, the guided tour felt rushed (understandable, they want to get as many people as possible to see the 'actual' paintings) and the interactive exhibits weren't as good as reading placards. But it was still an experience well worth having.
(Of note: the Catacombs tour had an 'audio guide' that also had transcripts. Versailles and Lascaux, and every later audio guide, lacked transcripts, at least as far as we could find, making them much less useful for me.)
That evening Steph and I walked into Sarlat to acquire dinner for everyone, and had an enjoyable ramble around the town. The French countryside is chock-full of these centuries-old tiny towns, with narrow twisty streets and stone houses and at least one monumental church. Also, often, a memorial to 'martyrs de la Libération' from the mid-twentieth-century. Lest we forget. This is basically catnip for me; I am happy to wander and get not-quite-lost indefinitely among interesting buildings and streets and gardens. Paris does this as well, of course, though quite differently.
Next: Gorges du Tarn, the Camargue, Marseille.
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Date: 2025-09-01 04:41 pm (UTC)