Provence to Dordogne, with a few stops in between

Narbonne

Leaving the lushness of Provence behind was hard. I can see why so many Brits and Americans buy houses there and spend their retired days drinking wine and dipping their bread in olive oil. But with a house rented on the other side of the country, it was time to go, so at 8 am we all squeezed (literally) in the car and headed to Avignon to tearfully drop off Fabienne. Bella almost didn't let her go, smiling dotingly at her the whole way there, then clinging to her as she tried to leave. I finally had to pry her off. So many wonderful aunties our girls have!

Knowing we had a 6 hour drive ahead of us, we decided to try for 3 stops along the way. Initially we thought about going through Montpellier, but deciding against a big city stop, we arbitrarily decided to stop in Narbonne which is right along the way. Having never heard of it, we didn't expect much, but we were entirely wrong! Not only does a section of the 2100 year old original Roman Rome run through the town, but it lay on the crossroads of two major Roman roads (heading South and west). The church in Narbonne is an amazing example of Gothic architecture. And its unusual, as it is amazing tall, yet compact, almost circular. Reading more about it, we realized that it was built about 800 years ago to be the biggest church in the world (in order to make Narbonne's naughty citizens shamed back into the Catholic church). They built for about 60 years, got the altar area done, but were stopped when their was a dispute about having to tear down the city's defensive wall to complete the nave. Then, they ran out of money. Basically, it never got done. We only got ten minutes in the church before it closed and they pretty much had to chase us out (Bubbe got pushed out of one entrance while the rest of us another so we had to wander around to find each other for a while). Afterwards, we stumbled into a museum across the courtyard (which had an absolutely amazing collection of Roman art), had lunch (Bubbe tried a crepe with chestnut puree!)

Museum display showing traditional housing construction method- reeds covered with plaster!

Being kicked out

Check out the sign- "Chien Chic"! basically "fashionable dog"

Montauban
A couple more hours of driving brought us to Montauban, which was the birthplace of painter Dominic Ingres and had a huge collection of his work. Ingres was the premier classicist of his time, his time being the late 1800s, and was hugely inspirational to many painters. His work is not necessarily, by our tastes, beautiful, although his skill is very evident. He was a fan of Greek and Roman classical art, with its posed and still composition, but he updated it and made it modern. The most amazing thing about the museum was the work of Cueho, who was an Ingres follower, who had three full rooms of homages to his work... there were big canvases filled with studies of hands, feet, etc, done in Ingres careful style. Also amazing was the dungeon area, filled with canons, torture tables and other dungeon-style implements that were creepy and interesting.

A couple more hours of driving finally brought us to our house right at dusk. Just east of Sarlat is St. Nathalene where our little gite is located (none of us have actually seen a village yet) in the middle of small farms, a chateau, houses with chickens and a few cows, etc. We are in one of three houses here carefully renovated by a British family with (Oh Joy) a huge manicured yard with a trampoline, cute little dog named Taffy, a tree house, swings, soccer pitch and badminton net. This is our first time being in a remote rental (10 minutes drive to the nearest store probably) and its a wonderful change. No stress to run out to the local stores or explore the town, just lots of lovely trees and birds to look out at. And a big stockpile of English chapter books for Eilidh and farming games for the girls!