Day 77: Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges - Gargas, France

Today was the third and final excursion organized by USAC.  It was a very enjoyable day.  At 8:30, we met on campus and took a bus to Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, which is about 2 hours away.  It is a tiny medieval city, with only about 250 inhabitants.  It is perched on a hill, and had some fortifications, but not much.  We started with a tour of the cathedral in town.  It is exceptionally large for a town of it's size, and was a very nice building.  

In the town square, just in front of the church.

Part of the church.

The vaults were quite wide, and there was a lot of light inside the building.

Very cool pattern, all done with play tiles, in the floor.

Looking down from the upper city and down to the city below and across the country side

Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges is also home to a collection of Roman ruins.  Because the city is half-way between the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean, it was a major city on the trade routes.  At one point, there were about 5,000 people living here.  There isn't much left of the ruins, especially because they were all scavenged for stone, but it was cool to see them. 

Looking down into what is left of the amphitheater, built into the hillside below the city.

Looking across some of the ruins back towards the village.

This is the marketplace, one of the largest excavated remains.

This is the remains of the baths, one of the essential components of any major Roman city.  To the left was the actual bath.

After we finished, we went to a very nearby restaurant for lunch.  We ate at Le Rastelier, a small restaurant on a farm.  We had a really great 5 course meal for lunch.  We started with a delicious soup, which definitely had pumpkin and celery, and I think also had potatoes.  We then had salad with ham and really wonderful, fresh tomatoes.  The main course was roast chicken with potatoes and caramelized onions.  It was fantastic.  We we then served some locally made cheese, and for dessert, we had an apple tart, that was really a lot like apple pie.  

Our chicken cooking as we walked in.

Really good soup.

Really good salad.

Really good tart.

Old farmhouse.  Doesn't it look quite French?

After, we took a fifteen minute bus ride to visit the caves at Gargas.  The cave features a large collection of prehistoric mural art.  There are countless geometric etchings in the walls, 100 animals carved in the walls, and 231 painted hands.  The cave art dates from between 27,000 and 29,000 years ago.  It was very cool to see stuff that old.  Pretty difficult to conceptualize.  Photography of any kind was prohibited, so I didn't get any pictures, but here are some websites:


http://www.donsmaps.com/gargas.html
http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/clottes/

When I got back to Pau, I went home and my family was already eating dinner, so I made plans to meet up with Megan and Jayna.  They were headed back form Toulouse, so it gave me some time to play.  For dinner, they both really wanted to go back to to Chez Maman for crepes.  We had to wait about 30 minutes for a table, but it ended up being a really great dinner.  We ended up spending about 3 hours eating and chatting.  It was a nice evening. 

Jayna and Megan

It was nice to do something different, and it was a really fun day.  Only three Saturdays left in Pau! :( 


Really sad.