Uni-fied

Here's an old favorite from 2004 (before I started blogging). I posted it here in 2006 during the blog's first year. It's taken on the grounds of the château at Bouges, about an hour south and east of us. I don't think I've been back there since then. I don't remember what was going on when I took the picture, but I was lucky to have the camera ready.

Four kids on unicycles with one running behind. Château de Bouges, October 2004.

This was before I had my own digital camera. I was using one of Ken's first cameras, a Canon PowerShot Pro 90, undoubtedly set on automatic mode.

A fond farewell

So this will be the last of the photos that I took back at the end of June when we visited friends in Varennes-sur-Fouzon. Those friends will be leaving their vacation home soon for a few days in Paris before heading back to the USA.

The sign as you leave Varennes-sur-Fouzon.

They came to spend the afternoon at our place yesterday and we made pizzas for lunch. I got a little panicky when the oven locked up. I had the temperature up high and the pizza stone got very hot. Apparently the oven thought it was in a cleaning cycle and locked itself. We had to trip the circuit breaker to turn it off and let it cool so that it would unlock itself. It did, and we continued along without further incident.

In all, I think we made five pizzas during the course of the day. And while the weather was hot, it didn't rain until later in the evening and we got to be out on the deck the whole time. What fun!

Avenue de la gare

Here's another photo from Varennes-sur-Fouzon. It was just over two weeks ago now that we were there. I took these pictures while taking Callie for a walk in the morning (we spent the night there). There is a long avenue that leads from the center of town out toward the train station, hence its name (Train Station Avenue).

The train station is all the way to the end of the avenue, then off to the right, outside the picture.

The people we visited are Americans who rented a house for a good deal of the summer. They like to spend summers away from the sweltering heat of the Arizona desert. They are coming over to see us on Saturday and we're planning a pizza party. Home-made pizza, of course. There may be photos...

A very symmetrical house

I walked through a very pretty neighborhood that morning in Varennes-sur-Fouzon. We were having rain showers off and on the previous night and all the streets were wet, like in a movie. One long, tree-lined avenue was especially nice with pretty, well-kept houses on either side. I think this is the last house on the avenue before the town line.

Blue shutters are very common. Ours are brown.

I especially like the iron window boxes (click on the photo to make it larger). Behind the house were a couple of small out-buildings and the property extended to the right in this photo where there was a good-sized vegetable garden.

The edge of town

Still in Varennes-sur-Fouzon, this is a view of town from just outside to the north. The fields of grain give way to buildings with the church just about in the center. French towns don't sprawl to the extent that American towns do. They are compact and very city-like at the center and there are very few buildings outside the town line.

Standing outside of town, looking in.

We're now in a period of cooler, wetter weather. Just in time, too, because summer vacation just began. Ugh!

Sports bar

I'll bet this place was full on Friday night. Full of people watching France lose to Germany in the World Cup quarter final. Lots of dejected fans, I'm sure. At least we won't have to watch the face-painted crazies singing la Marseillaise on television any more. For now.

Hotel de France, Varennes-sur-Fouzon. All closed up on a Sunday morning.

The Tour de France started on Saturday. I watched some of it while alternating with the women's tennis final in Wimbledon. It wasn't a very exciting match and it was pretty one-sided. And the bicycle race was (and will be today and Monday) in England. Pretty pictures. On Tuesday they get to France.

Amber waves of grain

No, not America. France. The wheat and other farmed grasses around us are looking to be very close to harvest time. In fact, I have seen hay bales popping up here and there already. On Friday we drove to a restaurant about a half-hour from home and passed many a golden wheat field.

I'm not at all sure this is wheat. It doesn't look like the wheat fields I saw on Friday.

This field is just outside the town of Varennes-sur-Fouzon where we had lunch last weekend. I took the picture during my morning walk with Callie at around 7:30 in the morning.

Views of Varennes

Like most French towns, the center of Varennes-sur-Fouzon is clustered around a church, a vestige of the power of the Pope and the Roman Catholic institution in the middle ages. I'm often amazed at just how monumental these churches are, especially in small towns of no more than a thousand people.

The church is built in the romanesque style (pre-gothic), but the current building dates from the late 19th century. Almost new!

I didn't go inside this particular church, but I've been inside enough of them to know that it's probably very well maintained, and likely still used, if not for weekly masses, then for weddings and funerals and services on the high Catholic holidays.

Kumbaya

So here we are, deep into the evening on Saturday. It must have been near ten o'clock, when it starts to get dark this time of year. There were rain showers on and off all afternoon, but with enough dry spells that we could enjoy being outside. The fire really helped.

From left to right: Ken, L., S., and J. I was taking the photo. That's my chair on the left.

You can see the empty bottle on the ground. But after I took the photo, I also noticed another "empty" on the table in the background. Just so you know, we did not actually sing "Kumbaya." At least, I don't remember if we did.

La nuit de Varennes (sur Fouzon)

Not far from the château at Valençay is the small town of Varennes-sur-Fouzon. It's not a place we knew before we met L. & J. from Arizona. They have rented a vacation house in Varennes several times over the years. This past weekend, they invited us for lunch. Saturday's meal started with tasty stuffed mushrooms, followed by chicken Marbella and a lovely risotto. After salad and cheese, we capped it all off with an apple tart.

The main road through town.

As will happen, we continued enjoying the afternoon with wine flowing freely and eventually found ourselves gathering around a campfire as the evening darkened. Our friends offered a bed for the night as we were not in a good condition to drive. We enjoyed a hearty breakfast of eggs and sausage on Sunday morning before setting off for home.

Just before breakfast, I got up and out for a walk with Callie. The town on Sunday morning was very quiet and pretty, and I had my camera.

The title of this post is a reference to the 1982 film, "La Nuit de Varennes," which tells the story of king Louis XVI's and Marie Antoinette's attempt to flee France in 1791. They were intercepted and arrested in the town of Varennes-en-Argonne in the Lorraine region, then taken back to Paris to stand trial before being executed.

Seen In Séguret

How about a little scene from Provence on a sunny Saturday morning? The village is Séguret in the Vaucluse.

Not a great photo, but I wanted to get my face off the top of the blog. Don't want to scare the little children.

Châteauneuf-Du-Pape

The name of this Rhône Valley town means Pope's Newcastle in English. It's within sight of Avignon, seat of the popes after their exile from Rome in the 14th Century. There is very little remaining of the old "new" castle - just part of the donjon walls and some foundations. It's a small town of about 2,000 Castels-Papals.

Steps lined with wine lead up to the ruined castle.

Aside from that, the town is best known for its wine. Thirteen varietals are authorized to make the various wines in this AOC: syrah, mourvèdre, cinsault, cournoise, muscardin, picpoul, grenache, bourboulenc, clairette, roussane, vaccarèse, picardan, and terret noir. Grenache is the predominant varietal in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and ninety-nine percent of the production is red.

Seen In Gordes

Gordes is a very popular stop on the tourist circuit in Provence. It's the quintessential hilltop town (one of hundreds of quintessential hilltop towns in France) with great views, picturesque architecture, and plenty of shops and eateries to take your euros.

A front porch on a back street.

Add to that hundreds of people with cameras and not a few tour buses. If you've seen one of these places, you've seen them all. Well, not exactly. But pretty much.

Still, you gotta go, right?

Church Tops 2

Just thought I'd throw a second one in, since I have a slide of it. It's not as nice a photo as the first one was, but it illustrates another style of bell cage.

This one's also in Provence.

Church Tops

I guess you'd call them bell towers, but I'm not sure. I don't know what they're called in French, either (do you know?). But you see them all over, especially in smaller towns.

A bell tower somewhere in Provence.

I wonder if these were built because the towns couldn't afford to complete their towers in stone, or if these iron armatures are just more stable than a higher stone construction.

At any rate, these bell cages can get pretty elaborate and they're really beautiful. This one's in Provence.

Blue Doors In Provence

I took these pictures in 2001 when we rented a house in Cavaillon, near the Rhône and the Luberon mountain. We were there in September and watched the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York on French television. It was a surreal experience.

A garage door on the house we rented in Cavaillon.

To top it all off, Ken was sick most of the time and spent many days on the couch in front of the t.v. Our friend Sue was with us, and Sue and I drove around sightseeing while Ken tried to recuperate.

Somewhere in Provence.

The older, restored house we rented was on the edge of town adjacent to an abandoned orchard. We deduced that it wouldn't be long before the land was subdivided since development was occurring all around the property. Still, it was nice, private, and comfortable.

And the Mistral blew.

Photo De Dimanche : Les Cygnes

Swans ply the waters of the Yonne River at Auxerre (2001).

Puy-L'Evêque

This tiny town on the Lot River is very close to the place we rented when we stayed there in 1995. It's amazing, if not a little boring. There's really nothing going on there, except for the lives of the people who live there. And that's probably enough.

Puy L'Evêque on the Lot.

There's a bridge, a pretty modern one, across the Lot at Puy-L'Evêque. It's from the bridge that I took these photos. We crossed the bridge a lot while we were there. A lot. Le Lot. Hehehehe.

A close-up of town.

Ain't it purdy?

Cahors '95

The second time we visited Cahors was in 1995 (the first was in 1989). This time we found our way up to an overlook on a bluff across the river and took some photos of the city from up there.

The center of Cahors on the Lot River.

Cahors is built in a loop or meander of the Lot River, called a boucle in French (boucle = curl or buckle). The city was a prosperous commercial and educational center in the middle ages, and the Knights Templar established themselves there for a while.

The towers of the Pont Valentré rise up over the western edge of town.

The city's most famous monument is probably the Pont Valentré, a fourteenth century towered bridge with a legendary history. I posted a brief résumé of the legend here, along with a better photo of the bridge that I took in 1989.

A spillway and lock (écluse) on the eastern bend of the Lot.

Cahors is also famous for something else: its red wine. The Romans brought wine grapes to the Quercy region over two thousand years ago. Later, in the middle ages, Eleanor of Aquitane and Henry II Plantagenet favored Cahors wine in their court. The English, apparently, dubbed the wine "black" due to its dark color and rich taste.

The primary varietal in Cahors is côt noir, also called auxerrois. The same grape is known as malbec in Bordeaux and simply côt here in the Touraine region. A.O.C. wines in Cahors must contain at least seventy percent côt.

You can find Cahors in many wine shops in the USA. I like it, and if you like tannic reds, you might, too.

Le Château De Bonaguil

In 1995, Ken and I spent a couple of weeks in the Lot Valley in southwestern France. Le Lot is a river roughly parallel to, and south of, the Dordogne. Very close to the town of Fumel on the Lot, and kind of lost in the hills to its north, is the medieval fortress of Bonaguil.

The Château de Bonaguil see from across a small valley.

As I am with Roman ruins, I'm a sucker for a good medieval castle. And Bonaguil is an amazing, nearly intact, example of late fifteenth/early sixteenth century military architecture. It's pretty much what I imagine when I think "medieval castle."

Rooms and towers are ready for exploration.

You clan climb around inside, outside, and even under this impressive château-fort. The lord's residence is intact and visitors can crawl around the various rooms and gawk at the huge fireplaces. Most of the rooms are open to the elements. There is no furniture or other appointments, mostly just bare stone. But your imagination fills in the blanks most readily.

The surrounding countryside can be seen from the donjon tower.

From the high tower of the donjon keep to the damp, dank passages beneath the courtyard, you can almost see and hear knights and knaves and peasants and prisoners in this place. It's way cool.

The donjon, or keep, towers up above the central courtyard.

If castles are your thing, or even if they're not, this is a good one. You can see it in an hour or spend more time if you like. If you're in the region, it's worth seeking out Bonaguil. And, there's a town nearby for food and stuff!

Ken sits on the wall of the bridge over the moat between the castle's inner and outer walls.