France in 17 Pictures, Part 9
Okay, now that Christmas is over and I'm planning another trip abroad, it's time to post the penultimate installment of my France diary. Since it was three months ago, I don't remember it as clearly as I did when first posting, so I'm just going to pass on what I wrote in my notebook. One of the funny things about our France trip was seeing how urgently I need to write things down; I did not bring the beautiful leather travel diary my sisters-in-law so kindly gave me - too intimidating - but once we were there I found a cheap, stapled cahier at a bookstore and wrote in that. Someday I must post about compulsive diarists; I'm sure I'll find a lot of sympathy on LJ.
Here is October 2, 2009. We started out at our B&B, Les Filolies:
No English speakers at breakfast, which makes it embarrassing after "Bonjour." The other couple whispered to each other in French and we spoke to each other in low voices, and finally three French men and two teenaged boys came in to make noise and relieve us.
We managed to find Font de Gaume without the GPS, using only directions from Adrienne, the innkeeper. Through the town of Eyzie, follow the signs to the green painted building right on the road. It had some of the feeling of a US state park to it - well-maintained but not glamorous.
Inside the green building was a gift shop full of great looking prehistoric-themed stuff. We were plenty early so I earmarked some of it. The ticket seller was confused by my online ordering of tickets, which had been paid for by Adrienne, but they decided we were legitimate. Toby and I went out back to wait and I read to him from the last chapter of The Cave Painters. It was cold this morning, with frost that resolved to dew in the sunlight, and were bundled up.
At 11 a.m., we walked up the steep concrete walkway ot the cave entrance, where a Swedish couple were waiting for the tour, and we had a brief conversation with them in English. More people arrived, and finally the guide, a petite, smiling woman with the deep, raspy voice of a chronic smoker.
She apologized for her imperfect English, saying, "If you like, I can give the tour instead in perfect French," and then she laughed. She unlocked the heavy metal door to the cave. We had to give up our bags and backpacks and were instructed not to touch the walls or brush against them.
Inside, wild, lumpy organic shapes rippled out from the walls. The animals were not easy to make out - disappointing - but the beautiful curving antlers of the famous male and female ibex pair, I saw right away. The male is lowering his head to touch the female's face with his muzzle. It's barely visible, but I had seen Abbe Breuil's copy and that helped me to make it out. Breuil was a priest who made his life's work in the 19th century studying the cave paintings of France; at that time the only way to have copies of these paintings was to sketch them from inside the cave, and Breuil's work is itself beautiful. Here is one of his (I found the next two pictures on line; there was no photography permitted in the cave):
Four fine bison in a line to the left, above our shoulders.
The guide indicated the features with a laser pointer. The pictures were not easy to see. Still, it is wonderful to know that I have stood where my ancestors stood 27,000 years ago and seen the work of their hands. I would have liked to have stayed there and spend time with the pictures; maybe I could have seen more. The bison were very clear. Oh, and I forgot to mention the area where the dripping of the minerals had formed a cone shape against the wall; the artist used it to form the haunch of a horse; I could see that quite clearly.
We spent 95 euros in the gift shop! I bought tee shirts for myself, Tristan and Honor, an imitation bone carving of a mammoth for Dr. Quinn and one for me, and another one that is a carved head, also for me, postcards, bookmarks, and a poster. The poster is in my office right now. This mad purchasing frenzy was like getting vials of holy water from Lourdes, I think. Toby bought a super-interesting poster showing a diagrammatic chart of the last 5000 years of history, which we have since mounted on foam-core and put up in the dining room. I did not buy pens, note pads, pillows or tins of mints with prehistoric art on them, but I had expected to spend a lot at that shop because I like prehistory.
From Eyzie, we drove to Montenac, where Lascaux II is located. Lascaux-the-Elder is also located there, but not open to the public since 1964. Lascaux II is a reproduction of the original, untouched cave discovered in the 30s. The reproduction is supposedly exact, made by artists and experts. It's even cold and musty. It was hard to believe, after Font-de-Gaume's indistinct works, that Lascaux could really be as striking and beautiful as Lascaux II made it out to be; didn't they rather enhance and clarify? But the guide said no, these were exact reproductions.
It was easy to imagine the intense effect of the caves on the 1934 discovers, four teenaged boys and a dog named Robot, the first to see it in tens of thousands of years. Immense, black-outlined bull wheeling overhead, thundering lines of horses, delicate, shaded deer stuffed all around them - a cacophony of animals. And yet, it's the difference between a beautiful bouquet of silk flowers and a real one; when you find that they are silk, you feel differently about them, a perfect example of how what we know affects how we see. I knew that Lascaux II was a plastic reproduction of something wonderful and holy, and I didn't feel moved by it - merely interested.
Rested at home, then went back into Sarlat for another all-duck dinner, this one not as good as the first.
Here is October 2, 2009. We started out at our B&B, Les Filolies:
No English speakers at breakfast, which makes it embarrassing after "Bonjour." The other couple whispered to each other in French and we spoke to each other in low voices, and finally three French men and two teenaged boys came in to make noise and relieve us.
We managed to find Font de Gaume without the GPS, using only directions from Adrienne, the innkeeper. Through the town of Eyzie, follow the signs to the green painted building right on the road. It had some of the feeling of a US state park to it - well-maintained but not glamorous.
Inside the green building was a gift shop full of great looking prehistoric-themed stuff. We were plenty early so I earmarked some of it. The ticket seller was confused by my online ordering of tickets, which had been paid for by Adrienne, but they decided we were legitimate. Toby and I went out back to wait and I read to him from the last chapter of The Cave Painters. It was cold this morning, with frost that resolved to dew in the sunlight, and were bundled up.
At 11 a.m., we walked up the steep concrete walkway ot the cave entrance, where a Swedish couple were waiting for the tour, and we had a brief conversation with them in English. More people arrived, and finally the guide, a petite, smiling woman with the deep, raspy voice of a chronic smoker.
She apologized for her imperfect English, saying, "If you like, I can give the tour instead in perfect French," and then she laughed. She unlocked the heavy metal door to the cave. We had to give up our bags and backpacks and were instructed not to touch the walls or brush against them.
Inside, wild, lumpy organic shapes rippled out from the walls. The animals were not easy to make out - disappointing - but the beautiful curving antlers of the famous male and female ibex pair, I saw right away. The male is lowering his head to touch the female's face with his muzzle. It's barely visible, but I had seen Abbe Breuil's copy and that helped me to make it out. Breuil was a priest who made his life's work in the 19th century studying the cave paintings of France; at that time the only way to have copies of these paintings was to sketch them from inside the cave, and Breuil's work is itself beautiful. Here is one of his (I found the next two pictures on line; there was no photography permitted in the cave):
Four fine bison in a line to the left, above our shoulders.
The guide indicated the features with a laser pointer. The pictures were not easy to see. Still, it is wonderful to know that I have stood where my ancestors stood 27,000 years ago and seen the work of their hands. I would have liked to have stayed there and spend time with the pictures; maybe I could have seen more. The bison were very clear. Oh, and I forgot to mention the area where the dripping of the minerals had formed a cone shape against the wall; the artist used it to form the haunch of a horse; I could see that quite clearly.
We spent 95 euros in the gift shop! I bought tee shirts for myself, Tristan and Honor, an imitation bone carving of a mammoth for Dr. Quinn and one for me, and another one that is a carved head, also for me, postcards, bookmarks, and a poster. The poster is in my office right now. This mad purchasing frenzy was like getting vials of holy water from Lourdes, I think. Toby bought a super-interesting poster showing a diagrammatic chart of the last 5000 years of history, which we have since mounted on foam-core and put up in the dining room. I did not buy pens, note pads, pillows or tins of mints with prehistoric art on them, but I had expected to spend a lot at that shop because I like prehistory.
From Eyzie, we drove to Montenac, where Lascaux II is located. Lascaux-the-Elder is also located there, but not open to the public since 1964. Lascaux II is a reproduction of the original, untouched cave discovered in the 30s. The reproduction is supposedly exact, made by artists and experts. It's even cold and musty. It was hard to believe, after Font-de-Gaume's indistinct works, that Lascaux could really be as striking and beautiful as Lascaux II made it out to be; didn't they rather enhance and clarify? But the guide said no, these were exact reproductions.
It was easy to imagine the intense effect of the caves on the 1934 discovers, four teenaged boys and a dog named Robot, the first to see it in tens of thousands of years. Immense, black-outlined bull wheeling overhead, thundering lines of horses, delicate, shaded deer stuffed all around them - a cacophony of animals. And yet, it's the difference between a beautiful bouquet of silk flowers and a real one; when you find that they are silk, you feel differently about them, a perfect example of how what we know affects how we see. I knew that Lascaux II was a plastic reproduction of something wonderful and holy, and I didn't feel moved by it - merely interested.
Rested at home, then went back into Sarlat for another all-duck dinner, this one not as good as the first.