Day 2nd Day: Les Baux de Provence and Cathedrale D'Images

Our day 2 started with a visit to Les Baux which is a ruined castle and city which they have found traces of habitation that dates back to 6000 BC. It runs along the side of this mountain you can kind of see the picture of what it would have looked like by Troy. I hope that the pictures capture how neat it was. We walked up to the flag you can see in the distance.It sits up high in the Alpilles mountains and was a defensive stronghold used for many wars in ancient french history. It has a very long and colorful history if you want to read it you can look it up on the wikipedia website. (That way I don't have to go on and on and bore those of you that just couldn't care less)

In this picture you can see the remnants of a window of the castle. I am always amazed at what lasts through the years even when everything around it crumbles. You can even see the small detail work around the window!!They have now put a bunch of shops and restaurants in the village beneath the castle. I could have spent Troy's entire life's earnings in all the shops we went into in France but I had fantastic self control, his name was Troy. Anyway you walk through the village until you reach the castle at the top. When I say it is at the top of the mountain I am serious. As you can see from the pictures you can see the valley for miles. It was an amazing view. They grow grapes and olives which they are famous for below this castle. It was a really neat place to be but it was the windiest place.

This is me standing in front of what would have been the home of a family that lived in the castle which they literally built into the mountain. You can kind of see the roof that curved over the house and a little bit of the wall that separated the rooms.I as you can see decided to wear a skirt that day. As I have already said it was extremely windy . . . . I am sure you can gather how well my day went. I spent the entire day trying to keep my skirt from being up above my waste. I didn't always succeed.

At the castle sight they have old catapults which they demonstrate for everybody. I didn't get any pictures of this. I don't really know why probably because I was so irritated about the skirt.

They also demonstrated hand to hand combat which Troy thought was super cool even if we couldn't understand anything they were saying.This is Troy standing in front of the church in the village that has stood through it all. It was really neat to see the ruins and history there and think about all the people and Kings and Queens that walked the same path that I walked. It was soooo neat.

After we had had as much of the wind as we could stand we walked down to a place they call Cathedrale d'Images. I don't even know how to put into words how um um um (see I told you no words) "unique" "interesting" I am sure I uttered the word strange at some point. There is a quarry in the mountain that inside they have put the works of Picasso to music. The walls are gigantic and so the images are therefore gigantic. The pictures were on every wall and on the floor in every corner and even the ceiling. It was dark and the colors and light made it look like you were almost inside the paintings. Some of his work is kind of odd so sometimes it was a little um um um psychedelic is the best word I can come up with. This is about the best picture I could get. It was something that I will never truly understand or forget.