An adventure - we take to the hills

Tuesday and Wednesday were nothing-new days. Shopping, of course. Walking, of course. But nothing out of the ordinary. On Tuesday, we walked around the historic centre. I never get tired of it, although I think Karen does. To me, there's always something new to look at (notwithstanding what I just said), even if it's the same buildings or street scapes in different light.

Dance school

On Wednesday, I went out by myself in the morning to photograph around our precinct. I wanted to make sure I shot some of the elegant buildings on Avenue Jeu de Paume, the main shopping artery a couple of blocks from us. They're mostly neo-classical in style, many with stone carvings and attractive iron work. The proportions are very pleasing. They must have been gorgeous when they were still residences. Why can't we build structures like this anymore?

Portrait of the artist as an old man

I also wanted to record some street art I'd noted but never photographed. In one shot, taken over by the Carrefour, I managed entirely accidentally to snap our beggar, the Asian- or middle-eastern-looking woman who sits most days by the bank machine just around the corner. I've caught her, with child in tow, striding toward the market (or on her way home for all I know).

Our beggar, abandoning her post

In the afternoon, Karen and I went out together and headed for a gallery on the far side of the Ecusson. Galerie at Down specializes in street art and art inspired by street art. The exhibit, Sketches of Babylon II, was by an American artist, Mear One (his real name is almost as weird: Kalen Ockerman.) They were mostly acrylics on paper of imaginary, fairly bleak city scapes. Karen found the art very bleak altogether. I liked it, but there is clearly some social-political comment implied, and not entirely hopeful. Some looked vaguely Babylon-ish with high circular towers - although I suppose they could as easily be in a modern city centre, which is perhaps his point.

Painting by Mear One at Galerie At Down, Montpellier

The gallery was also showing some of his serigraphs (screen prints) which I found very attractive. They're pretty reasonably priced too for a limited-edition (non-photographic) print: €300 for a piece 20 x 21 inches.

Serigraph by Mear One, Galerie at Down, Montpellier

From there, we just wandered around the Ecusson. Did I mention that I never get tired of it? And that Karen does? More photographs ensued.

Cathedral, Montpellier

Thursday was our big adventure. We had decided to take the suggestion of our landlord and visit Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert. It's in the hills north and west of here. Saint-Guilhem is listed as one of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France. It has a 12th-century Abbey, and just down the road is a 12th-century stone bridge spanning the Hérault River where it meets the Verdus (which runs down the mountain from the village). Together they make up a UNESCO World Heritage site.  

We looked into renting a car for the day, but it would have cost at least $65, probably more with the hidden charges that seem to be the norm here. So I started researching taking a regional bus, and discovered it's incredibly cheap: €1.60 each way per person for any trip, however far. We had to take the tram to get to the suburban stop where the buses leave from, but even with tram costs, we could get to Saint-Guilhem, which is about 45 minutes away, for a total of €12.40 return - less than $20. For both of us.

The trouble started almost immediately. Karen was motion sick, for the first time in years, on the tram. It didn't help that some stupid teenager got on with a lit cigarette (illegal) and sat near us. By the time we reached the bus stop, a full-blown migraine had set in - or so she assumed it to be. We had come without gravol or pain killers - very stupid - and there were no pharmacies nearby. I was for aborting the journey, but after we had waited the 25 minutes or so for the bus, Karen was feeling enough better that she thought she could manage it. She couldn't.

By the time we got to Saint-Guilhem (with a change of bus at Signac), she was barely hanging on to her breakfast - and in fact lost it in the washroom of the bus station. It didn't get a lot better for the poor wee thing the rest of the day. She was headache-y, dizzy and nauseated much of the time we were in Saint-Guilhem. She had none of the lunch we brought (baguette, cheese, left-over sausage).

We did, however, manage to see the village, and it is indeed very pretty. It's named after a knight of Charlemagne's court who helped drive the Saracens out of this part of Europe. He retired here late in life, helped found the Abbey de Gellone and died here in the early 800s. It was apparently not uncommon for noblemen in the middle ages to abandon family and public life in this way and become monks on retirement.

Place de la Libertée, Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert

Looming over the village is the remnants of a castle, which, according to legend, was once inhabited by a Saracen giant, whom Guilhem slew in single combat. The village's other remarkable feature is the mammoth 150-year-old plane tree in the middle of the Place de la Libertée, the main square (or only square).

Abbey de Gellone, Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert

At least some of the time, Karen was well enough to enjoy it. The Abbey museum was closed, but the very austere church was open, and what remains of the cloister. Most of the cloister was dismantled and sold off over centuries, some of it ending up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Cloister Museum in upstate New York. There was some interesting remnants of painted frescoes on the surviving cloister walls - possibly medieval, but without the information presumably available in the museum, we don't really know.

Abbey de Gellone, Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert

We had arrived about 1:30, and sat in the main square for 20 minutes or so while I filled my face, but most of the rest of the time until our bus left at 5:05, we wandered around the village, which is not very big. At one point, I left Karen sitting on a stone wall in the sun with her head down while I traipsed up a hill taking photographs. But for the most part, she was a trouper. We finished the day in a cafe overlooking the river gorge. By the time the bus came, Karen was feeling much better, she said.

Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert

It didn't last, unfortunately. The bus set her off again. I bought pills in Signac, but they did little good and she was in pretty rough shape by the time we got home. In fact, she took to bed without dinner and slept from about eight that night, right through until 7 the next morning. She's still not right today, which makes me wonder if it really is a migraine. I'm not sure she's ever had a migraine that made her this sick, certainly not in many years. But it's not impossible. Some people get migraines like this. The other possibility is a viral bug. We shall see.

Karen feeling poorly on the tram

I went out in the afternoon and wondered around the Ecusson taking pictures and looking in shop and gallery windows. Karen napped and lay down most of the day, but is now enough better to be sitting up doing a sudoku. We'll see.

Montpellier, Ecusson, German cultural centre