Life in Bellegarde and Albi

After our marathon of driving to little villages we've been using our last two days here to experience life in and around Albi. On Thursday evening we went out to dinner with our home-stay hosts at a lovely restaurant, Cascabar, that serves beautiful fresh food. We had the three-course meal that included two appetizers, a main course, and two desserts. Fortunately the portions were small enough that we could enjoy everything. Here's my appetizer. And here are our French friends, Julien and Adeline.

Albi is a small city of about 50,000 and it has a wonderful Medieval centre that is full of restaurants and stores and narrow alleys with tall brick buildings. Apparently some of these buildings are home to wealthy people who have created parking for cars and swimming pools in the inner courtyard areas. But there are also many smaller apartments and homes. It's not really a tourist city despite its beauty, but a place where lots of people live and work. It has a large hospital is right down along the river beside the cathedral and there is a university affiliated with the one in Toulouse.

This is big covered market right in the old area. It appears to be old but I think it is a new building designed to fit right into place. The market is open every morning with longer hours on Saturdays.

On Saturday we headed down there to find an entirely different scene. An outdoor market hs been set up all around the covered market and scores of people were out shopping.

But by 12:15 all the action was over. Vendors were packing up and heading off to the bar for a celebratory drink

Down by the river there are three brick bridges across the Tarn. This is the new bridge, built in the 1940s. There's also the old bridge from 1040 that is still in use.

This shows the old bridge in front of the new one. We walked across the old bridge yesterday to explore the neighbourhood across the river. La Madeleine is an 18th C suburb. Our plan was to return on the third bridge, previously a rail bridge that is now being transformed to a pedestrian and cycle bridge. Our plans were foiled though as the transformation isn't yet complete.

But our walk back allowed the discovery of a sweet little museum and lunch spot. We saw the sign for the Museum of Miniatures and headed over to find an nice little lunch menu.  Inside we asked the woman about lunch and she told us about two dishes that were being served. She also told us that all of the miniatures had been made by her mother remembering scenes from her childhood.  We headed upstairs to the little dining room in the attic and ordered lunch. It was delicious.



Here's Harry in the oh-so-French dining area sitting in front of one of the miniature rooms. They're kind of like an upscale dollhouse. And the museum was full of dozens of them. The schoolroom, the butcher shop, the maid's room, the dance studio, the kitchen, the  patisserie...on and on. It was fascinating.

Not to mention the lunch, with very good wine and at an excellent price. the couple who run this place must be in their late 70s and they toiled to bring the food upstairs to the attic room. We enjoyed talking to them about their life which included time in India as well as France.

Here's a view of the cathedral from the other side of the River Tarn. The mauve blossoms from behind the wall have been intriguing us since we arrived in Toulouse. Here's a close-up of the flowers and leaves. I am thinking that that it may be what is called a French Lilac.










But I may be wrong. Correct me if you can.  What ever the name, they are very beautiful and a highlight of our time in this part of the Occitaine.

We've really enjoyed our time in Albi, but I think the high point may be last night when we went with our homestay hosts to a local Salsa fiesta at the community hall in Bellegarde. We walked down with Adeline and Julien and their two children plus another couple from  Bordeau and their two girls who are visiting this weekend.

It reminded me of the gatherings at Saturna Island with parents standing around talking and drinking and kids roaring around and having a great time.




Here is Evy on the right with her friend from Bordeaux as we walked down to the party room.





































The room was set with a bar and big wine casks to stand around and socialize. People were super friendly and interested to meet us and we had a great time. The dinner was a traditional dish somewhat like paella and cooked in an enormous pan with prawns and chicken and mussels but with pasta instead of rice (sorry I can't remember the name--but it was delicious). We ate at long tables all together.

After dinner the dancing began.  We begged off the salsa lessons and headed home about 10:20, but it was a really wonderful evening and a great ending to our week in Bellegarde and Albi.

Today we left and headed south to Carcassonne in the pouring rain.  We're on our way to Narbonne and the  the second half of our trip

Three days of villages

We've spent the last  three days discovering and exploring some of the many villages around the area. They're all exquisite and after a while they start to blur together. Today I've taken time to look through the hundreds of photos I've taken and select a few that will give an idea of what we found.

We'll start with Bellegarde, the village we're staying in. It's really agricultural here with big farm vehicles driving down the narrow roads and farmers out plowing. But it has a church and a school and even the Mairie (Mayor's office).

And this is the countryside around us. It's just coming to life now. The yellow flowers in the front were a brilliant carpet in some fields but are now fading. This is rapeseed and I believe it is used to make what we call Canola oil.

Everywhere we drive we see beautifully cultivated land like this with large and small villages here and there. We're most interested in the beautiful old ones. Like Cordes sur Ciel, which sits up on a hill above the rolling fields.








It's a medieval village that was basically abandoned for decades until it was discovered by hippie artisans in the 1960s. Since then it's become known for its leatherwork and other crafts. We walked up and up from where we left the car, passing stone houses like this. We wanted to move right in.

Here's the main square with chestnut trees and and green painted shutters and a place for people to gather and a stunning view over the fields below.

On Wednesday we awoke to a misty day and drove South to visit Lautrec, a village where Toulouse Lautrec's family lived for generations. Unlike Cordes, Lautrec was very sleepy, with no restaurants or coffee shops open. It felt somewhat gloomy, perhaps because of the grey weather. Many of the doors had little bunches of grass tied to the handles--maybe some kind of blessing or good-luck charm?

Neither the cat nor the tortoise seemed to mind the cloudy day though.

Lautrec has one of the only working windmills left in France, although the sails on the paddles were furled so nothing was happening.  From the this hill we could look down on the town and the plain below it. We ducked under this arch on the way back down the hill.

Yesterday we stopped in four (!) more villages. The first was St. Jeury for the Thursday morning market. The second was Gaillac, a centre for the very good local wines that are made here. Below is the St. Jeury market--about a half a mile of stalls strung along a plaza in the centre of town.

As well as the usual assortment of gorgeous vegetables, there were stalls selling everything from shoes to underwear to pots and pans, kbroom and baskets. This was sold oil cloth by the meter.

 

The next two villages were also high up on hills. Castelnaud-de-Montmiral is a Bastide village with both stone and half-timbered buildings. (I'll write more about these in another post).

After exploring it we stopped for a drink in a little cafe overlooking the farms below and the proprietor told us about another village, one of the "plus beaux villages de France" that was only about a 15 minute drive away. Of course we had to go, even though it was getting late and we were kind of tired of driving.  So off we headed to Puycelsi, perhaps the most darling hilltop village we've ever seen.





Puycelsi sits atop a very high cliff. It's been completely restored and has an almost fairy-tale out-of-time feeling. Yet it was obvious that contemporary people are living here.  Here's a bit of what we saw.

On the left is the gentle side of the hill where we parked the car to the right is a chapel that was built in the 1600s to commemorate the ending of the plague.  The other photo is the adorable cafe with an arbour to shade diners from the sun.

All the buildings are of stone with the typical red tile roofs. Roses and wisteria and irises are growing everywhere. An aside--the wisteria is on the wane, but it's replaced by lilacs, both white and mauve that scent everything

I'll leave you with these last three photos of the village. Of course it took twice as long as he said it would to get Puycelsi. If you are exhausted from reading and looking at this post, just think how tired we were last night when we finally got home.  But we're so happy we made the effort to see this little piece of heaven.