France, Part Trois (Also, my first medieval village and cathedral)

After spending the night in a small motel (that we made our reservation and checked in to via a slightly more complicated sibling of the good old ATM), we were back on the road for another 5 hours of driving. Of course, it took us 8 hours, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Utterly tired of the car and of speeding past beautiful countryside and dillions of illustrated signs touting all the incredible landmarks we were missing, we decided to take a break and stop at the next cool thing we spotted. That happened to be an amazing little walled off village replete with ancient cathedral named Saint Bertrand de Comminges.

Now, this is the kind of thing that sucks and rocks about no longer having my iPhone operational. With it, I would have been buried in Wikipedia entries and web sites learning all kinds of things about what we were looking at. Without it, I just sightsaw and took pictures and found myself very in the moment.

And what a moment! With an amazing view of the Pyrenees, and older than old all around us, it was a beautiful experience.

I was really looking forward to viewing history, and well...really old stuff in Europe. But, I'm still blown away by just how old this stuff is! This little village was originally founded in 72 BC. I mean WHAT!? After several hundred years of doing whatever people did in 72 BC and thereafter, the area was razed and lay deserted for about 500 years. Then, in 1083, the cathedral and most of the walled in village was built and has just stood around chilling ever since. That's more than a thousand years! It boggles the mind. And now here we are cruising around, buying soap and wooden swords and just generally being boggled.

On the way out, we passed through a small tunnel of sorts that The Man was veeery nervous about pulling The Rabbit through. But, we fit! He said get out and take a picture of this! And I said I can't open my door!. Ha ha ha, thank goodness we had a tiny little car before we moved here.

Spain! On the other side of those mountains! El Niño was stoked!


The view on the approach.