I am going to put up pictures from this past weekend though!
I had a great time in Villefranche with Karen. It was great to speak English and catch up and reminisce about UVA and watch too much TV. Villefranche is a tiny town! But it's very pretty. It's in the "Midi-Pyrennees," so it was a big change of scenery from Perigueux. Perigueux is in the Dordogne which is rolling hills and vineyards. The Midi-Pyrennees are the beginning of the Pyrennee mountain range, so the landscape is totally different. I actually didn't real at all on my train rides over (three trains to get to Villefranche!) because I was looking at the scenery. Though I was also falling asleep because I had gotten up at 4:30 in the morning. Anyway, here is Villefranche-de-Rouergue:
Karen's apartment building in the first one on the left with the brown shutters. Not a bad location!
Main shopping street - where we both successfully purchased a pair of shoes and chatted with a friendly French shopkeeper. (I guess I should have said "store owner" but for some reason "friendly French shopkeeper" just flowed better.)
Arches surrounding the central square for the market.
Bridge built in the 13th century in the center of Villefranche. Pretty cool. And sturdy.
Like I said, we didn't do a whole lot in Villefranche, but we did get some shopping in and watched a lot of TV and caught up and laid around. It was really very nice. But since it would have been unacceptable to do that for 48 straight hours, we also went out for a day trip on Saturday afternoon. We took the train to the next town over, an even smaller town called Najac.
It gets cooler than this picture.
When we first got off the train at Najac, we were a little concerned that we hadn't done our research because we were at the bottom of a small mountain and could only see the backs of houses way up on the mountain top. We ended up having to walk about two kilometers up a road that wound (winded?) up the mountain to the cathedral and castle.
We thought this was going to be the hardest walk of the day...we were wrong.
Cathedral in the center of town which was delightfully accompanied by "public restrooms" - or my first experience with using a hole in the ground as a toilet. It was lovely. I guess it's keeping in habit with the age of the cathedral. The Najacois were forced to build the castle in the 13th century as a punishment for being a religion that wasn't Catholicism.
Oh, hey.
The castle was on the left in this picture, but we couldn't actually see it because it was closed for the season. We walked all the way along this ridge past the castle through the main part of town.
Most of the town was closed up (like the other towns I visited the weekend before last) because it's mainly a vacation town. Almost all the buildings were original and from the 13th and 14th centuries - it was a pretty amazing place to see.
Unfortunately the light wasn't great - but what a view!
Many of the houses had grape vines growing on them. Leave it to France to have the makings for wine right there on the side of every other house!
Najac was a really gorgeous town. We both got a ton of great pictures. Because the town was fairly empty, you really got a good idea of what it must have looked like during the 13th century. It was really interesting! It's been a good experience seeing all of these tiny little towns.
Remember how I said that we were wrong about our first walk being the hardest? Well we took the "pedestrian route" back to the train station - which ended up being more of a hike down the side of the mountain. We were not dressed appropriately for a hike at all... And this was no mistake on our part, no "Megan and Karen didn't know enough French so they hiked down a mountain by mistake." No, no. The sign told us "This way to the pedestrian route to the train station." Hm...
Hooray! Picture together! (Which we took sitting in the middle of a road because we couldn't find a wall high enough to take our picture standing. And there definitely weren't many people around to take a picture of us!)
So that is Najac and Villefranche. Two more French villages added to the list.
I also keep saying that I'll talk about teaching - but I'm too tired to do that now. The only thing I can say right now is that I find it exhausting, and it also confirms that I have no interest in being a teacher as a permanent career. But I'm surviving! I'm teaching about American sports this week, so that means that as I've researched the topic, I've gotten to watch a lot of highlight reels and "This is SportsCenter" commercials. So that's always a plus. :-)
There are probably typos in this post. Too tired to fix them! Sorry!
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