Heat Rises by Richard Castle

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I eagerly anticipated the release of the third novel by the fictional Richard Castle, and I was not disappointed. It kept me guessing, and kept throwing in the odd sock so that I had to guess again. I gave it five stars because I think this mystery could go beyond entertaining fans of the series; it can be enjoyed by any reader of the genre.



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Cite de Carcassonne by De Lannoy François

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I buy books for souvenirs of the places I have been. I like books that have lots of pictures and long captions with additional text to explain what I saw and to what I listened to on the audioguides. It gets a four out of five stars because there was less information in this book than the information in the tour's movie and audioguides. It is a nice souvenir from a World Heritage Site and France's third most popular tourist destination.



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Child of the Northern Spring by Persia Woolley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I might not have heard of this book if it were not for Free Fridays from Barnes and Noble.

I read it because I enjoy historical fiction, and this book is the first of a trilogy from Guinevere's story. This first novel is the story of her wedding procession from Rheged to where she will wed the High King Arthur. Her early childhood is told in flashbacks. The facts are well-researched. The narrative holds the reader's interest.

I recommend it to readers who enjoy historical fiction or Arthurian tales.

This book and its sequels are no longer free from Barnes and Noble.



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14 Oct. 2011 Chateau de Peyrepertuse

Today we are on the road to the Chateau de Peyrepertuse.
It is in a mountainous region with many switchbacks as the road goes around the mountains, down through canyons, and back up again.

Peyrepertuse has been occupied since Roman times from the start of the first century B.C. The first mention of the castle is in 1070. It was important for defense in the Crusades against the Albigineons. The Albigineons lost and Guillaume de Peyperpertuse was excommunicated in 1224. It became a French possession in 1240. It was important for defense of the border with Aragon and Spain from 1258-1659 , and it had dungeons there.

The Chateau is laid out upon a limestone ridge at a height of 800 meters (2,624 feet) above the scrubland ecosystem of this area. We drive up this mountain until we reach the parking area for the ticket office. With our admission fee, we receive the map and audio-guide to use while we continue on foot.

Visits are forbidden during storms and high wind conditions. Steps are slippery, even on the best days. Climbing was an adventure.
I think this is my favorite place for I love the panoramic views of this area. Peyrepertuse is a place of history that is told by troubadors and heard by the imagination of we who experience its vision.

13 Oct. 2011 St. Hilaire Abbey and Views of Carcassonne from the road

This navigator has more problems understanding the Google maps directions. I’m looking for a street named Rampe de l”Eglise and in the town of Leuc I see a sign that indicates the Eglise is up the hill. I suggest we stop at the town parking lot. We eat a picnic lunch while we overlook a river. We walk back to the sign. We find a church but not an abbey. We return to the car and start to follow some signs. We think someone in this town may have a good laugh at the tourists who try to follow their abbey signs for they direct us through the narrow streets with blind turns and across the narrowest bridge to L'Eglise (which just means Church). This bridge would remind you of the bridge between the fields on Grandpa Taylor Dunn’s farm. When we came back across the bridge, Patrick noticed a weathered sign that directed us to St. Hilaire 8 Km away. We finally find the correct place.

At Abbaye de Saint Hilaire, monks no longer live here and it does not have its own priest. Only once every two months are services held here. The tour was self-directed with the audio guides in English. We took pictures of the cloister,
the church interiors,
and the abbot’s room with its ceiling paintings of naughty pictures.

The young man who works for the patrimoine (heritage site) has as many questions for us as we do. He speaks excellent English but I do not have many answers for him because they were questions I never thought about before. He is concerned with the illegality in France of asking people about their religion where they have three: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim; and yet we can freely discuss religion in America.
Why do Americans separate Church and State, and yet we have “In God We Trust” on our money?
Perhaps our cultural situation is different because USA has not had a State religion, as the Catholic Church has been in this region from time to time. Thank you, Thomas Jefferson.
Another explanation of a cultural difference may be there has not been a Crusade on our soil that destroyed all Cathars. If you want to leave a church you are free to start one of your own and have two or three Baptist churches in your village.
I can answer how many churches there are in my community and what denominations they are with a Facebook post when I return home. I also send a link to Don’s Flicker photos to this Abbey, and several French people comment on his pictures.

Monks first learned to make sparking white wine that predates champagne at L'Abbaye de Saint Hilaire. Blanquette de Limoux is no longer made by monks here; but it is still made and sold at a business down the road. Their wine is sold by the bottle as we expect. What we did not expect to see were customers who bring in their jugs for refills from vats with a hose and nozzle for the wines they prefer for their table wines. Yes, that was another cultural shock and I had to take a picture.

On the drive home we are suprised by a view of Carcassonne from the highway. Don found a place to stop for some more photos.
One of my pictures has an airborne helicopter in the frame with this ancient city.

Patrick and Don grilled our supper in the patio area of our villa.

12 Oct 2011 Carcassonne

Carcassone was the first place we knew we wanted to visit on this trip. It is a World Heritage Site and it is the third-most-visited tourist destination in France. We are lucky to be there off-season so we do not feel crushed by tourists. La Cite de Carcassonne forms the largest group of ancient and medieval urban fortifications preserved in Europe. We watch the introductory movie, the English-speaking audio guides impress me for they are wirelessly synched to the movie so no matter when you enter the movie the audio matches the movie’s audio. We tour the Chateau de Comtal. Don is not allowed to use his tripod when he takes his pictures inside the Chateau de Comtal. There are two enclosures of rampart walls over an area of 7 hectares (17.3 acres.)
There are 48 towers, 4 barbicans (outer defense work at a gate or bridge) and 2 bartizans (projected lookout areas.) This walled city encloses a castle and two basilicas.
There are also more than 100 businesses to take your tourist Euros.
We are too busy being amazed at what we see to do much shopping.

We eat lunch at Le Trouvere where I have real French onion soup,
cassoulet (the regional cuisine made with white beans, duck and sausage)
and choice of dessert -chocolate ice cream or creme brulée. Wine was Vin de Pays des Cotes de Prouilhe Chardonnay 2010.

In the afternoon, we walk the length of the north ramparts
and then we walk between the inner and outer walls for a distance of about 2 miles.

As dusk approached, we walk to Pont Vieux (Old Bridge) across the Aude River for a view of La Cite lit up in the night sky.
A full moon provides additional light.

11 Oct. 2011 La Muraillasse and Fontfroide Abbey

Outside the present-day village of Armissan is La Muraillasse, which was part of a wall built in 899 and 1110 for the church and Chateau of Saint Pierre du Lac. The church and chateau were destroyed by fire in 1355 during the Hundred Years War by Edward Price of Wales (eldest son of Edward II and called "The Black Prince.") La Muraillasse is the sole remnant, and it borders the road to Armissan.

We stop for gazole at a place with one clerk in a payment booth and gates for entry and exit. After fueling, cars must line up to pay the clerk in the booth and exit through a barred gate. The movement of the line of vehicles stalls. We look to the booth and recognize the universal frustrated behavior of a clerk who is on the telephone with tech support and still unable to get a machine to do what it is supposed to do. When one customer drives off through the entry without paying, she sprints to block the entry until this problem is resolved. The exit bar finally raises so the first car can pull off to the side, and allow cash paying customers exit. Between the three of us, we have the exact change. She is gracious to us; we imagine we could have learned the French phrase for, "They don't pay me enough to put up with this sh*t."

We are still unable to find a bank in Narbonne that will exchange dollars for euros. One bank teller says they only do it for their existing customers. Another teller suggests we try a bank at the train station. We find the train tracks when the road goes over them. We never find the road’s exit to the train station.

We enter Autoroute 9 farther south than we want to be for our Google Map to direct us to the abbey we want to visit today. The next exit for a turnaround is 35 kilometers away. We stop at a travel center with an ATM where we can use the Travel Visa debit cards to withdraw Euros and again be the Chesnut bank to exchange some Euros for dollars for Pat.

When we arrive at the correct exit, we continue to have difficulties finding and staying on the local roads to the Fontfroide Abbey because the Google Map directions confuse us. The Michelin map helps us outside Narbonne. We stay on same road at roundabouts unless we spot a sign that changes our direction. This abbey is not easy to spot from the road. It may be a large structure halfway up a mountainside but it is nestled in a valley.

L’Abbaye de Fontfroide is well preserved for the same Fayet family has owned it for the past 100 year after the last monks left. It is a splendid example of private initiative helping to preserve a national treasure that otherwise might simply have crumbled away. Even though we have the English audio guides, we must be part of a French-speaking guided tour through the abbey. While we wait for the next tour, we walk on the nature trail but we don’t have the time to climb to the top where an Iron Cross is visible for miles.

Because the guide talks longer and gestures to more things than our audio-guides discuss, we feel as though we are not as well-informed as the rest of the group.

The beautiful stained glass is not original to the abbey. The commissioned artist commissioned has used found shards of stained glass shattered by bombings from WWII to make new windows.

The beautiful rose garden has more than 2000 rose plants. This garden is over the former burial grounds of monks and abbots who died here.

Tonight we eat at a restaurant in Narbonne-Plage. It is open to serve wine before its dinner hours. Patrick asks if we can be served food from the dinner menu even though we were early, and they agree. (It looks as if they are glad for business today, now that the tourist season is over.) They have an English menu where we can order by pointing at the numbers! I had a #18 salad composée (similar to a garden salad) and #27 marguerite pizza. Don ordered #41 salmon with frites and Patrick had steak with mushroom sauce. We shared dessert: chocolate fondant and creme brulée. Patrick has a red wine and we have white.

10 Oct. 2011, Pont du Gard and Nimes

Yes, it is a bit of a culture shock to find the open-hole toilet at the rest area; enough of a culture shock that I return to the car for my camera. It is a good thing hiking in the woods gave me some practice to keep my clothes out of the way!

Pont du Gard is outstanding and impressive. The construction of this Roman aqueduct, which took water to Nimes, began in the year 50. Its height of 48,77 meters (160 feet) makes it the highest Roman aqueduct.
The foundations of the pillars are pointed in shape, like the tip of the prow of a ship to face the current without resistance. The first and second levels feature six and eleven superimposed arches whose span varies from 15.5 meters to 24.5 meters (50-80 feet). The third level has 35 arches with a span of 4.8 meters (15 feet.)


I take panoramic shots in my attempts to convey the grandeur of this bridge built with large blocks with dry joints.
I take some pictures with Patrick at the base for human scale.
Plus, I’m always looking for the small things nearby, like the Nautilus shell and wildflowers.
There is a nice museum, gift shops, snack food cafeteria, and toilets that were familiar enough I did not have to take pictures of them.

We drive to Nimes to see more Roman ruins but modern-day city traffic confounds us. We get stuck in lanes while Don stays with traffic flow. Traffic has us going in circles in the roundabouts until we find our safe exits to Les Arenes. Street parking is too tight, and sometimes we are not sure what is a public parking spot. We find an underground parking lot whose spaces are tight enough that opening the doors are difficult. Don backs out and finds a spot to which our car is better suited.

I do not know the name of the fountain but it is pretty and it is outside the parking garage in a park area.

We stop at an outdoor cafe to settle our post-driving-in-Nimes-nerves

with a glass of wine for each and a quatre fromage pizza to share. I eat the pieces with the weird-looking cheese on top.
We look around for a street sign to get our bearings. Don notices Les Arenes is across the intersection on the western corner of the street. Patrick buys our admission and rents the English-speaking audio guides. Les Arenes is the best preserved in the Roman Empire.
We have the time to tour it completely and to take as many photos as we like. We miss the staged fighting of the gladiators. We see four actors train to use the trident and net.

We did not have time to go to additional museums or sites for they closed by 6PM.

The payment process is different from the parking garages in Ohio. We take the entry ticket with us When we are ready to leave, a vending-style machine is located at the bottom of the stairway. Place the entry ticket in the appropriate slot of this machine and the fee (9 Euros) is displayed. Deposit currency; and a receipt pops out. When our car is ready to exit the multiple- floor garage, the receipt is entered into a gate machine and the bar raises to allow our exit. We make our way back to Autoroute 9. The drive on Autoroute 9 takes us back to the town of Narbonne for the Carrefour supermarket.

Shopping at the Carrefour is stressful for me. While it has the appearance of being similar to Walmart or Kroger superstores there are many things different than the language of the signs. We know we have to bring our own basket to hold our purchases.
Produce is weighed in the department on a scale with a touch-screen, which shows a variety of items with unit prices in Euros/kilogramme.
Seafood is displayed in an area similar to produce with its own touch-screen scales and a pronounced fishy odor.
In the meat case, we see large cuts of cheval (horse.)
We search for the French version of Stouffer’s frozen entrees to microwave for our supper, and we did not find them. In a refrigerated case, we find some sealed packages that look like those old-style Boil-in-a Bag entrees, and there might be micro-wave cooking instructions on the package. Don almost selected one that I encouraged him not to take, for I know that lapin translates as rabbit. He buys osco bocco avec veau; that is veal. Patrick gets lasagna ala Bolognese, and I have shells with ricotta and espinard (spinach). The bakery special displays make the selection of strawberry tarts for desserts easier.
Checkout is easy for my Visa Travel card works like a credit card here. I just have to sign the receipt instead of using my PIN code.

I have a bone to pick with the phrase guides I chose to bring. Not only do they not have diesel=gazole, they don’t have all the words in the cooking instructions on these packages. Do we remove the entrée from the plastic before micro-cooking? If we leave the plastic overleaf on it, do we pierce it to vent it? We guess and the food is good.

The Pont Du Gard: The Site and the Large Exhibition by Roselyne Moreaux

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This was an excellent souvenir with many photographs and pictures of the site. The text explains the history and has the facts about the dimensions.



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9 Oct. 2011 Tautavel, Caune de l’Arago, Gorges des Gouleyrous, Narbonne-Plage

Today is a learning day that begins with how to take a shower in this villa. Instructions for the shower come with villa’s guide, and understanding how to use the extra hand-held shower tube still requires a learning curve.

We learn the grocery supermarkets are not opened on Sunday, not even the Carrefours which would be similar to a Walmart superstore. In the village of Armissan, the butcher, baker, and a sundry store are open for only a few hours. We buy a rotisserie-roasted chicken (le poulet), which will be more than enough for two meals. The croissants from the baker are as delicious as you might expect, especially the chocolate chip ones for breakfast. At the sundry store we buy tomatoes and apples. We look for the milk in the refrigerated case and can’t find it. The owner shows its location is in a 6-pack under the shelf on the floor. The milk is sterilized. We refrigerated it before we drank it.

The other thing we learn to buy is diesel fuel for our transport, the Volvo V60. The instruction book for our car is in Spanish since we rented it in Barcelona, and in Espana diesel looks like diesel with accent marks. My French phrase books use the word l’essence which translates as gasoline. In France, the diesel fuel we need is on those three nozzle pumps similar to the ones in USA, and the word is gazole. Gazole costs 1.47 Euros per liter, which is about $8.32/gallon, and premium gasoline costs even more.








We have a lovely countryside drive to the Museum of Prehistory in Tautavel where we can see the skull of a 450,000-year-old human, known as Tautavel Man.

The museum has audio guides which translate the information into English. We enjoy the displays of fossils and the dioramas that spark our imagination.



Tautavel man had some crude tools made from stone; but he did not yet have fire. In this area, there had been elephants, rhinoceros, and giant bears for this was before an Ice Age. During the Ice Age, some of the elephants evolved into woolly mammoths and there were reindeer. A camera was linked to the excavation sites to show the scientists at work in a cave where different layers of sediment show many different periods of human habitation.

After the museum we drive out of town to the parking area of the Caune De L'Arago and Gorges des Gouleyrous which is beside a graveled road in a vineyard field. We enjoy a walk along the beach area of the river.
We did not find trailheads for hikes to higher elevations. A pictograph looked as if rock climbing were allowed. Again my phrasebooks failed me for there was no translation for “grimpe.”
We enjoy today's scenery. My camera can’t do justice to the depth of the walls of the gorge for so much of it is in shadow even this early in the afternoon.


We eat supper at the villa. We return to the beach at Narbonne-Plage for pictures of the moonrise over the Mediterranean Sea. I try to capture the reflection of the moon in the waves and water on the beach.