Get Real Time

We interrupt this tour through Southern France (which actually happened weeks ago but whose posts are being spread out over the month) in order to bring you some current news.

This past Sunday is Mother's Day in France, two weeks after the holiday in the US. And I would make some joke about how France is behind the US in everything, but of course it's not really, and especially a propos to the subject of this post.

We decide to go to the Jardin des Plantes for the morning. Then I have to run Pippa back to the metro for a birthday party, then run back to the Jardin to re-meet up with my family. I tell you this only so you will understand why I cross in front of the Jardin three separate times in short order.

In front of the Jardin is the start of an anti-gay marriage march -- one last chance to protest before the first gay marriages begin (this past Tuesday, May 29). On trip #2, when I am walking back with Pippa, she spots a trove of rainbow flags. Assuming it's a counter-protest booth, we ask if we can have one. "Gladly!" Well, then I unfurl the flag and discover that they have actually spray-painted their anti-gay marriage symbol (heterosexual family holding hands) across the rainbow. However, it's a large enough flag that I can just leave it half-rolled, and I then proceed to march through the demonstration with my rainbow flag, giving it all a big thumbs down. Pippa appreciates that I'm not screaming out my opposition (as I did during trip #1) and believes I'm doing it to save her the embarrassment, but really it's only because there is no way I could possibly shout over the megaphones, speaker systems, and hundred thousand people that are marching.



On trip #3, I am alone, and it's a good thing, because a man comes up to me and -- seeing that I am ostentatiously carrying a rainbow flag (little does he know I got it from his own side!) in opposition of his march -- physically attacks me. Folks, I may be small, but I'm feisty. And, apparently, quite foul-mouthed about it. A string of loud English obscenities comes out of my mouth as I kick him, pry his fingers from my arm and flag, and shove him away. Somebody has to keep him from coming back at me, and let me tell you, it's a good thing for his own sake that they do, because I am building up to explosive levels of rage. I would say, "Unhand me, good sir!," except that he's no good sir. Plus, my swearing is not Shakespearean. It is entirely possible that I give him not only what he deserves, but also bit of what my previous pickpocketers deserve, and, frankly, almost 10-years worth of don't-curse-in-front-of-the-kids cathartic pent-up swearing.

 

 

For sheer ridiculousness, my two favorite signs/slogans in the protest are "After you, Mr. President!" as if the law actually forces everybody to get married to somebody of the same sex. And the other is "Last Mother's Day!" Yes, because once gay people can get legally married, there will no longer be mothers, or appreciation for them. I see.



On our way home for trip #4 with Gigi, we try to avoid the manifestation, but end up crossing it anyway. In two separate instances, I am stopped by older women who smile at us and echo my thumbs down of the march. Huzzah to these open-minded little old French ladies!

 

Tonight, on our way home from gymnastics, Notre Dame is absolutely swarming with police in riot gear. Pippa asks why, and one of them tells her there is a "risk of a demonstration." Gigi looks at the line-up of police vans, with more officers inside, and comments, "That looks like more than just a 'risk'." What she doesn't know is that about a week ago, a crazed anti-gay-marriage right-wing nutjob left a note on the altar of Notre Dame and then blew his brains out with a gun. To which I say (and I realize this makes me sound horribly callous and inhumane), "Good riddance." The cathedral was evacuated and locked up for the first time in something like thirty years.

The next day, a pro-gay marriage nutjob re-enacted the scene by pointing a fake gun in her mouth in the cathedral. She was shirtless, with "May Nazis rest in Hell" written across her bare chest. So, you can see why the police are a little over-zealous when it comes to Notre Dame this week.

 

Meanwhile, the state has been performing gay marriages for three whole days, and as far I know, I am still a mother, and my children still appreciate me (when I'm not embarrassing them. Which is often). We won't know for sure for another 51 weeks or so, yet I'm optimistic that I will get a batch of hand-made cards in 2014, too. But, I hope when I celebrate Mother's Day next year that I won't be attacked on the street.
 

O'er the Ramparts We Walked

Our family has been playing the board game Carcassonne for years. So, naturally, we want to go see the real place that inspired it. I know I once referred to the castles in la Dordogne as the castliest castles, but perhaps the title should go instead to the castle and fortress of Carcassonne.

 

 

  

If you ever make it to the middle of nowhere, France, where Carcassonne is inconveniently located, we highly, highly recommend arriving one afternoon and sleeping here. Most of the visitors are day trippers, so it's quite peaceful inside fortress walls after hours. Peaceful, magical, and just a little bit spooky, too. It's off season to boot, so we have the place almost to ourselves. Just us and our shadows.  

 

The morning is tranquil, too, before the next horde of tourists descends. It's nice that Carcassonne has the UNESCO World Heritage site classification, which allows them to illuminate it beautifully at night, but it does make it that much more difficult to find the quiet moments here.

 

 

At a chateau fort like this, it's all about the defenses, of course: arrow slits, for example. And my perennial favorite -- the murderholes, down which one could pour boiling sap (not oil, because that was too valuable to waste), or -- just for fun -- very large stone balls. I don't know why, but now whenever I visit a castle, I like to cry out "Murderhole!" in a sort of haunted ghost voice. Try it, sometime, if you want to cheer yourself up. I also learn about hoarders, which are not (in this case) people who keep old Chinese take-out menus for decades but rather the name for wooden walkways attached to the outside of the crenelated ramparts. They allow guards to look down and ensure that nobody undermines the castle. When the guide explains this to us, I get so excited I actually exclaim out loud that this explains the origins of the word "undermine"! My level of excitement is shared by exactly nobody, and Anthony shakes his head sadly, wondering how he could have married such a dork.

  

 

If a big stone ball dropped on your head doesn't do you in, perhaps you can simply arrange to fall off the completely guardrail-free walkways along the ramparts. If you do fall off, however, don't bother suing the French. It's your own stupidity, and your own responsibility; I guess liability was not a big issue when the castle was built about a thousand years ago -- on top of the already thousand-year old Gallo-Roman foundations (if you're counting, that means some of the walls we see were built around the year 300).

Dor-done

This year, when we leave the Dordogne, I feel like we've done everything we really want to do, though not actually everything, by a long shot. There are a surprising number of mills involved.

We get to eat at Au Vieux Moulin (The Old Mill), the restaurant in the unbearably cute converted mill in the almost unbearably cute town of Les Eyzies. We eat American hours, from the restaurant's opening at 7pm till around 9pm. As you can see from the photo, we  have the place to ourselves. Yes, there is foie gras.

 

 

We visit a mill where paper has been made since medieval times, and even get to make our own...

 

 

 

We take a day to go old-timey at Le Bournat, a more-or-less 1900s-themed park.

 

 

It's old-fashioned fun, all right. Gigi enjoys stacking the cans even more than knocking them down. We get to ride on a mechanical horse that goes around the track. And Anthony tells me this mirror makes me look, and I quote, "even shorter and squatter than usual."

  

 

We take a real horse cart ride (at my insistence) which becomes our family joke (at my expense) for the worst vacation activity ever, mostly because after waiting and waiting, we finally get on the overly-mellow cart ride just in time for the heavens to open up on us. So now I know: wet and bored is not my family's favorite state of being. Yes, Le Bournat also has a mill, which is still in operation, grinding flour to this day.

 

 

This year we manage to squeeze in the Jardins de Marqueyssac. It's not our favorite thing ever, but I can tell you it's a whole lot better than a rain-soaked, horse-drawn cart at an old-timey park.

  

 

And we knock off two more of the "Most Beautiful Villages of France," a list I have found to be unfailingly consistent. So many of these villages are in the Dordogne, there's no way to see them all. But this time we add Belvès with it's medieval market roof that used to hang a cage for prisoners. Nowadays there is a sample cage which, inexplicably, has a grubby Santa Claus doll in it. What is the world coming to when Santa himself is on the naughty list?

 

The photos don't do Belvès justice, because it's really quite magical. As is the medieval, hill-top village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, which is basically prounounced "San Seer La Poopie," and is therefore as much fun for Pippa to say as Les Eyzies (a.k.a "the penises").

  

Amazingly, we don't visit a single castle in the Dordogne this year, mostly because after the Loire, the girls have had their fill. But they better get ready, because the next stop on our trip is the most castle-y place of all...
 

Four Cs of the Dordogne

Normandy is known as the land of the four Cs: Camembert, cider, Calvados, and cream. But I think Dordogne could easily be the land of the four Cs as well: castles, canoeing, caves, canard (duck), and climbing. Yes, that's five.

 

We've already covered castles (last year) and caves (this year) and canard (both years till it's coming out of both ears). That leaves canoeing and climbing. We also did those last year -- canoeing on the Vézère by the prehistoric sites and a ropes course called The Indian Forest, and this is the one absolute must re-do on the girls' vacation list. The girls love all the climbing and swinging, since they are part monkey/ part mountain goat.  And now that they are taller monkey-mountain goats, they are excited to see what else they can do on the course.

 

  

A lot, it turns out. Gigi can do everything but the course meant for 15 year olds and up. She gives that one a try too, but it is immediately too big and hard for her. Pippa meanwhile, gets off the green and blue courses she did last year and is able to do the entire red course and part of the black course. Her greatest success, however, is not throwing up in the car on the way to the Indian Forest, and after we pass the infamous vomit spot and the store where we bought emergency clean clothes, she lets out a big victory cheer.

Even I can't do the whole ropes course, since there's one part of the black where the staff member -- who is taller than I am, naturally -- says he has to go on tiptoe. Only Anthony, who is part Tarzan/ part Spiderman, can do the whole thing.

 

 

Yes, our legs, backs, and stomach muscles are sore for days.

We pack in two activities in one day: We manage to sneak in an end-of-day canoe ride down the Dordogne itself. This time we float by many castles. The thing that amazes me the most, however, is the amount of green, undeveloped land we pass. I can't imagine an American area in the shadows of a great tourist area with all this prime river-side land just sitting there, wild.