Bilbao -- the Guggenheim, Richard Serra

After seeing many Guggenheim Bilbao photographs and the excellent documentary by Sydney Pollack, coming upon the massive silver-colored, fish-scale-covered sculpture of interconnecting shapes was familiar and exciting. However I did not understand the scope and the magical experience until I walked inside. In the soaring halls, every surface is curved in glass and tile, transparent in all directions, relating the city to the Nervon River, the parts of the building to one another, the individual to a sense of magnificence and intentional dynamic integration.

As the third floor was closed, between installations, admission was reduced and included an audio tour, which provided valuable insights to the architecture and exhibits.

But I didn’t need any explanations to experience Richard Serra’s freestanding giant steel sculptures that fill the enormous hangar-like gallery on the first floor. Vertiginously, each draws you in, through towering curved and variously tilted metal walls, like the alleys of an ancient city, deeper and deeper until you arrive at an open space, a center. The last one (of 7 or 8 experiential pieces) has right angles, forcing you to turn directly, in contrast to flowing into the space. At the center, the metal walls form the unexpected and sensual shape of a vagina.

In an adjoining room with scale models and photographs, Serra’s installation, titled “The Matter of Time,” is described as “based on the idea of multiple or layered temporalities. The obvious diversity of durations of time are activated and animated by the viewer’s movement.”

To further illuminate, I quote from the artist: “The torqued ellipses, spirals, spheres and toruses exist in the polarity between the downward force of gravity, their weightlessness and their upward rise in elevation which attempts to attain a condition of weightlessness.

“The sculptures are not objects separated in space but on the contrary engender the spatial continuum of their environment. They impart form to the entire space, they shape the space through axes, trajectories and passages between their solids and voids.

“Meaning occurs only through continuous movement, anticipation, observation and recollection. However, there is no prescribed view, no preferred sequence, no preferred succession of views. Each person will map the space differently. There is an unlimited range of individual experiences, but they all take place over time.
“When I talk about time I do not mean ‘real time,’ clock time. The perceptual or aesthetic, emotional or psychological time of the sculptural experience is quite different from ‘real time’. It is non-narrative, discontinuous, fragmented, de-centered, disorienting.”

It’s true. It’s amazing, mind-bending, life-altering to experience the disorienting and exhilarating sense of space and time while moving between two large sheets of rusty steel. It is incomprehensible without the experience. This, I think, is the genius of Richard Serra, and also of Juan Muñoz, who I’ll write about next...to engage us in the questions and discoveries of our world and our selves.

Bilbao, 18th September – Bellas Artes

Images from Bilbao


Everyone I’d met in the Basque country told me with great conviction that Bellas Artes, Bilbao’s “other” art museum, contains more interesting art than the Guggenheim. So I started there, in an unimpressive cubical building, a short walk from Frank Gehry’s looming and irresistible titanium ship.

What a classic museum like Bellas Artes presents is an insight into change over the centuries. I began with a special exhibit of 19th century painters and sculptors, particularly Spanish. These captured the ordinary life, and life was hard…working in fields and factories, kitchens and washrooms. The facial expressions were joyless, worn down by work. Even paintings of mothers with their children seemed sad, probably because the woman had a series of miscarriages and infant deaths. A few sculptures and paintings portrayed fabled romances, like Tristan and Isolde and Samson and Delilah -- the tragedy of passionate love. There was no happiness, that being, I’ve often been told, a “modern concept,” albeit still an elusive one in spite of – or perhaps because of – our elevated expectations.

In another temporary exhibit, of 20th art, I was enlightened to the fact that many Spanish artists created in cubist, surrealist ad abstract styles, not just the renowned like Picasso, Miro, Dali (all represented in this show), which is why such styles are considered “movements” (duh!). I saw an image of a cubist cow in a 1920’s painting that was exactly the same as Picasso’s tortured cow in “Guernika”, painted a decade later. Plagiarism, or influence, becomes apparent in such an exhibit.

As my purse had to be checked in at the reception desk, I did not have a pen and paper by which to make notes and therefore cannot recall specifics, but I was struck that in this era there were no representations, no effort to capture life as it is lived externally but, rather internally…in the abstract, the deconstructed, the provocative. But mostly, the swiggles and splashes of color seemed self-indulgent to me, without any concern for the viewer, for communication; except to express that the world is confusing and only the individual alone has significance.

I drank a café con leche on the patio, within the pleasant adjoining park, and wondered about new art: Was anyone expressing the connection between people, the possibilities of our post-modern age, the need for a message of hope and love and waking up to the crisis we’ve created on our Planet? If peace is not in our hearts, how can it be in the world?

We love those we love. We live the life we create, deciding if it’s “good” or “bad”, if we are content or not. With our thoughts we create our reality.

On to the Guggenheim…

Toledo Spain

I have tried to be sequential in this trip, but most-recent adventures tend to eclipse what happened last week, or yesterday, so I am taking the liberty to write without concern for actual dates...what difference does it make? It all happened and is now just a story anyway...a very good one.

There is an intensity in newness that must give way to familiarity and comfort in order for us to function. Such a pace as I've been on for more than 2 weeks is starting to feel exhausting. Originally, I planned to spend a week in Madrid and head out to Granada and on to Barcelona then up the Costa Brava and back to Toulouse in southern France to meet my flight back to the states on Oct. 7. But my experience in Madrid is so welcoming -- and I still haven't made it to the Prado! -- that I decided to go to Granada for the weekend as planned, and return to spend another week in Madrid. I will fly directly from here to Toulouse on Oct. 6.

TOLEDO

I enjoyed a beautiful blue-sky day in Toledo (Sunday, 22 Sept.) after a late start. It's difficult to get to sleep in a city where people begin dinner well after 10pm and normally turn in about 2 or 3 in the morning, but it's a rhythm that suits me fine. I hurried to catch a 12:20 train to Toledo but, in typical Spanish style, the vague instructions from the so-called Information booth put me in an hour-long line to buy a ticket for a 40-minute train ride. Oh well, standing in lines here is part of the culture... and now I know there are special fast lines for impending trains. In Spain, one has to discover these things for one's self.

After getting on the 1:50 train, I was met an hour later in the main plaza of Toledo by Professor Abdurrazzak Douhal, a famous nano-chemist from Morocco who I met on the train from Toledo to Madrid last November and he expedited my tightly-planned trip to the airport. He had said, "Next time you're in Toledo, I'll give you a tour of the university." I thought it a fat-chance that I'd ever be back in Toledo, but there I was again.

Toledo is an extraordinary city of tiny, steep and winding cobblestone streets; alleys actually, and its a sure bet that you will get lost in the maze, even after living there 25 years like Abdurrazzak. Actually, I think he has the worst sense of direction I've seen, and I seemed to know my way better than he after only spending 2 days there a year ago. We wandered, and in a delightful mix of Spanish and English, we talked about theoretical science and applied Life, like human nature and will and the magic of the moment when things shift; and they always shift in a moment.

We ate lunch (gaspacho and ensalada mixta) at a sidewalk cafe and visited one of the four Toledo campuses of the Universidad de La Mancha, which presents a good example of melding modern and ancient architecture; there is even an interior area of excavated Roman ruins. Because I was with a professor, we obtained a large iron key by which to visit a terrace which gives an elevated view over the river and crammed-together tile roofs (from the same era as those in Florence) under which dozens of generations have lived and died.

Every twisting street is a photo op of ancient stone and plaster buildings in a variety of colors -- yellow, pink, tan, blue -- with wrought-iron balconies and light fixtures, window boxes and shutters. We visited the huge cathedral, which I did not see last time. If you overlook the catholicism, it is pure art -- vast interior spaces with soaring columns and a plethora of compound arches between which are a myriad of paintings, bas relief sculptures (my favorite) and gold-encrusted designs that attest to Fibanacci series centuries before it was identified mathematically. The sheer size of it -- it felt at least 3 times bigger than Notre Dame in Paris -- was awesome.

There is so much more I could write about Toledo, having spent two days exploring it last November -- El Greco, the Sephardic Jewish community, the Moors, the Inquisition, the capital for a brief time of Isabel & Ferdinand's rule -- but it will have to be another time.

I took the last train back to Madrid at 20:30, the Metro three stops and then, within a block of the apartment I call home this week, I had to use my map to find Calle Relatores. The narrow street, one block long, is in the old part of Madrid, which is all angles and alleys and streets changing names at each intersection. I like it here, and plan to return for another week after this weekend in Granada. Granada! I have found, through www.craigslist.com, a room to rent at a woman writer's apartment nearby, in the old city. I will fly from Madrid to Toulouse Oct. 6, from where I'm ticketed to leave for the States on the morning of Oct. 7.

Lewallen Contemporary, at the forefront of change in Santa Fe

Our dear friends and neighbors, Ken Marvel and Bob Gardner, owners of the preeminent contemporary art gallery in Santa Fe, the Lewallen Contemporary gallery (http://www.lewallencontemporary.com/), were featured in a recent Wall Street Journal article about changes in Santa Fe. Please check it out:

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB122186392923158615-lMyQjAxMDI4MjIxMTgyNjEzWj.html

(The photo is of Bob, Ken and David on the beach at Barceloneta, a portside area of Barcelona, April 2006).

Cordes-sur-Ciel, a city in the sky (12 Sept, 2008)

Last September I made a pilgrimage, so to speak, to Mont Saint-Michel, a UNESCO World Heritage site which loomed large on my Life To-Do list. It is the most-visited abbey (3 hours west of Paris) and sits majestically on a rock, surrounded by volatile and impenetrable tides, at the border of Normandy and Brittany. David, his sister Jan, her husband Richard and I spent a night on the Mont, feeling as if we were the only people in this Medieval time warp.

Cordes-sur-Ciel, near Albi, is also a popular tourist site and evokes a similar sense of time/space discontinuum, but it is much larger, more of an actual living city and extremely well preserved. The cobblestone streets snake steeply up the hillsides, lined with luxurious 14th and 15th century homes decorated with sculptures and other architectural details. There are façades and remnants that date from the 13th century when the fortified village was founded by the Count of Toulouse in 1222 to protect the Cathars.

I did not get the "whole story" on the Cathars, but apparently they represented strong opposition to the corruption of the Catholic Church. Priests and Bishops were getting married, pilfering riches and otherwise undermining confidence of the people who decided to form a grassroots movement and demand adherence to the faith. They were, of course, condemned by the pope and sought out and destroyed in a crusade which began in 1209. There are numerous churches, ruins and museums that attest to the Cathars' resistance efforts.

Cordes-sur-Ceil was considered an alchemist's stronghold. I wish I had time to explore the remnants of them. Today it boasts a high concentration of craftspeople in glass, wood, canvas art, sculpture, fabric, ceramics and so on. The feel of the place was magical and the two hotels we previewed would be delightful to visit, overlooking the pastoral valleys and the ancient stone spires.

Albi, birthplace of Toulouse-Lautrec

Albi, on the banks of the Tarn, is famous for its two 13th-century landmarks: Sainte Cécile Cathedral and Palais de Berbie, which houses the largest public collection of works by hometown boy, Toulouse-Lautrec, born here in 1864. The cathedral, which has a very plain exterior, like a brick mill, is covered on all its interior walls by elaborate paintings, some of which -- like the geometric shapes in the photo -- seem remarkably modern. The architecturally-homogeneous historic center is full of half-timbered houses, cloisters, stone plazas and churches.

However, by Day 5 of the tour, and with our hotel being a disappointment, (3 stars and not worthy of 2), and a cold rain falling, I had hit a wall, overloaded with information and sight-seeing. The dinner, at Chateau du Vin (if memory serves), was odd by all estimations. The wine, which usually flowed freely, was meted out to us in small portions and the food, when it finally arrived, was a watery shrimp drink, salmon wrapped in nori on a stick and other inedibles. Clearly, the famous young chef was trying to impress us, and trying way too hard.

To further fuel my weariness, my favorite black jacket was lost. I could hear the houseboy in "Out of Africa" saying, "This jacket does not want to be with you." Indeed, it had tried to leave me the day before but a person from the restaurant where we lunched chased me down the street to return it. This time it had truly parted ways from me, and I hoped it found a good new home.

After another fairly sleepless night, we proceeded to the most fantastic town of Cord sur Ciel and a full-on last day in Toulouse.

Roquefort -- a Cheesy Place

Since 1863, Société has been making its smelly, moldy cheese in caves in the mountain town of Roquefort. Around that time, tunnels were discovered with a chartreuse-green mold, a form of penecillium, which is now cultivated in the caves. Mixed with goat milk, from a special local breed of ewes, the cheese "blooms" and is made into rounds by hard-working women and then placed on end, on wooden tables, and left to ripen for months under the supervision of "master ripeners."

There are seven producers in Roquefort but Société seems to be the largest, exporting about 25% of its production and making a name for itself on the tourism circuit. As the growing season is January to June, the factory was empty and in the places of thousands of rounds of cheese were plastic imitations, The dioramas and displays date from an earlier, pre-tech period and are, in a word, cheesy.

Millau - Gloves, Bridge, Friends, 10 Sept. 2008

Millau (pronounced "Me-oo") is a small city in industrial decline and yet, thanks to our extraordinary tour guide, Hubertus Richard, it was among the most interesting stops. Its only remaining manufacturing company is Causse, which makes some 25,000 pair a year of very fine and very expensive gloves, keeping alive this elegant craft (gants de peau) since 1892.

But, recently, Millau put itself on the map with the construction of a viaduct designed by Sir Norman Foster. Considered the highest suspension bridge in the world (343 meters from the base to the top), its 7 elegant harp-like posts create a stunning profile against the stark landscape and span the Gorge du Tarn, shaving several hours off a road trip from the north of France to Bizet on the Mediterranean coast.

It is a privately-funded project, with the agreement or projection of recouping its investment within 75 years. However, returns coming from a single toll now look like the project will be paid for in a mere 20 years. A good bet. It took exactly 3 years to construct.

These facts and many stories and philosophical musing were presented by an energetic Dutch character who moved to Millau 25 years ago and embraced the city as his own. With intense energy, reminescent of Italian director Roberto Benini, Hubertus joined our group for dinner and then my new friends -- Wendi from LA,, David from Louisville, KY and our amiable tour bus driver, Pascal -- and I continued a late-night walking tour of Millau's extensive and mysterious old town with Hubertus.

Among its interesting stories was the fact that Millau shared history, culture and language for 150 years with Catalunya, due to a marriage of a Catalunyan daughter to the Count of Millau in the 12th century, and the city coat of arms still bears the colors and images of Catalunya. Exploring the winding, deserted streets in the wee hours, hearing tales of people who lived here, died there, gave the sense of walking through history and feeling both the connection to and disconnection from the centuries of human experience.

Conques and powerful relics

OK, times were tough in the Middle Ages. People desperately needed something to believe in and had no choice but to believe in whatever the Roman Catholic Church was serving up...sometimes one's own head for opposing it. But whenever there is no-choice, there are people who want something different.

An opposition group to The Church sprang up and those who fought them, in the name of The Church, became martyrs. Such was the case in the story of a girl who, at 13 years old, was beheaded for her faith and became celebrated as Sainte Foy (Saint Faith, Santa Fe -- Holy Faith). The gold statue of her sitting on a throne dates back to the 9th Century and was added to over the years -- embedded rock crystal from the German empire, earrings from the 13th century, her face replaced from a previous Roman statue, her shoes remade in the 19th century. Now, with more than 1,000 years of decoration, this statue (maybe 3-feet tall), is the only one of its kind and has engendered more than 1,000 years of devotion and mythology.

It resides in a chapel in Conques, a charming village of silver-gray slate roofs, steep winding cobblestone streets and brown stone walls, nestled into the side of a hill in a remote part of Aveyron. The town is a major stop on the way to Compestela and is famous not only for the statue of the young martyr and many other bejeweled vessels that hold pieces of the cross and body bits from saints, but for its abbey church of Sainte-Foy.

This church is a landmark of Romanesque architecture -- soaring stone pillars and arches -- and an elaborate carving on the tympanum (over the front door) of the Last Judgement. Amid all the images of eternal suffering (which look like "regular living" at the time), there are some interesting and whimsical faces which are called "The Curious Ones." Perhaps the sculptor had an unusual sense of humor or incredible optimism about the after-life. Perhaps he was beheaded for heresy, these being the only light-hearted images amid the serious business of eternal life. The abbey is also famous for stained-glass windows by contemporary painter Pierre Soulages. Some half-million tourists and pilgrims visit Conque each year.

Food, Wine and More Food and Wine

This region of the Midi-Pyrenees is known for its duck. Each restaurant (lunch and dinner) serves its own versions, beginning with a foie gras appetizer and continuing on with baked, broiled, roasted and otherwise prepared cannard. Even my gourmand companions were “ducked out” after 3 days.

Not being a foodie or meat eater, the amount of meat and the sheer volume of food soon became disgusting to me (desgustion is the French word for digestion, I think, or maybe just eating). A typical lunch: red wine and bread, salad and salmon quiche, foie gras, beef, potatoes au gratin, small onions in beet sauce, fondant au chocolat, coffee.

Five hours a day (or more) were spent sitting at a dining table. Enough! This is not to say that the experiences of eating on a barge, in a cave, in ancient vaulted-arched rooms or on cobblestone sidewalks were not enjoyable. Quite the contrary, and the regional wine was always delicious. And, of course, it is important to note that the French are slender despite their obsession with and love of fine food.

Images from Cahours in the Lot Valley

In the course of six intensive days, a group of 12 American travel agents, as guests of Maison de la France, visited a number of France's designated "beautiful villages" in the Midi-Pyrenees area north of Toulouse. These few photos of our first stop in Cahours (pronounced, roughly, as "cow-oos") do not do justice to the stunning beauty of this 10th century Medieval city built on the banks of the Lot River.

As I sent home (via a kind colleague) all the brochures I collected from this trip, I will not attempt to provide details beyond what my overloaded brain can recall, but I will post more photos (each blog allows only 5 photos) and, hopefully, fill in the details in the future. Needless to say, this is an area of France mostly unknown to U.S. travelers and definitely worth exploring for both its natural beauty and historic value.

My First Day in Toulouse, Sept. 7, 2008

After an hour of sleep, I wandered into the streets of Toulouse from the elegant comfort of the Soffitel (At 400 euros a night it better be comfortable!). The crowd is mixed – old and young, Arab and European – most dressed stylishly and walking purposefully as people seem to do in cities, even if they have nowhere to go.

My first purpose was to buy a bottle of water but with the inscrutable hours of French business openings and, more likely, closings, I finally found a bar open with a refrigerated case sporting Coke and Fanta and, I assumed, bottled water. Several elderly gentleman were leaning against stools. The proprietor came over to assist me. Not knowing even the word for ‘water’ in French I proceeded to try and explain myself, noting he did not have what I was looking for. He wanted to convince me to buy a soda and asked I removed my sunglasses so he could see my eyes. He looked at them and proclaimed with a smile, “tres beau,” and laughed kindly. What an old flirt!

I continued walking several blocks, observing the odd mixture of ancient and post-war modern buildings, until I came upon a street café that seemed lively. I sat at a small round table at streetside and ordered a glass of vin rouge. Quite good, it was 2 euros, the price of a liter of water. Old women passed by arm-in-arm or holding hands, teens with piercings whizzed by on skateboards or motorized scooters, all the women were wearing gorgeous shoe styles I’d never seen before (I love beautiful shoes) and everyone looked healthy.

The cars are small and there are plenty of people riding bikes on the tree-lined streets. Many of the bikes are velos, the smart citywide bicycle rental program like the one in Paris where you put in a credit card, take a bike and drop it off at any other velo stand. I was vexed by the same situation of not having a ‘smart chip’ in the U.S. credit card by which to rent a bike. I keep believing there is some way around this, but short of having residency in the E.U., it’s quite impossible. Hmmm…how to solve that dilemma? Oh well, move along.

AIRBUS & CONCORDE, Sept. 8, 2008

Yesterday (was it only yesterday?) we spent the morning at the Airbus facility outside Toulouse, which employs 4,000 workers in 3 shifts round-the clock, and 56,000 workers in the cooperative production effort between France, Germany, UK and Spain which was made possible by the UK-France collaboration on the Concorde back in the 1970s.

The scope of the projects are staggering, and the ingenuity mind-boggling. For example, there are numerous structures that cover 10 hectres each (the size of 300 tennis courts, if you can imagine that). One of the buildings has more steel -- seen as exterior skeletal supports -- than the Eiffel Tower, an onsite energy plant, underground fuel lines to more efficiently fuel up the A380 with its 310,000 litre capacity which is considered "green" because it uses only 2.9 litres of fuel per passenger per 100 km flown compared to the industry average of 3.3 litres and the Concorde which used 15 litres.

Various parts are manufactured in the different countries' 16 plants and shipped to Toulouse for assembly. In order to move some of the huge parts from the French port to the inland plant, an elaborate multi-modal transport system had to be designed along with special trucks with side lasers to guide them through narrow French town streets. That one trip takes 3 nights.

Then 23,500 rivets are hand installed to attach the fusilage and wings to the oval-shaped body. The engines, ordered by the customers (airlines or sheiks) are made by Mercedes Benz or Engine Alliance (GE) and account for a third of the roughly $300 million U.S. price tag. After the planes are put together, they're shipped to Hamburg for painting with 2 tons of talcum-laden paint. With a goal of 450 deliveries per year in 2010, up from 275 in 2007, it seems like investing in talcum could be a good bet. You read it here first.

The security at this place was extensive – barbed wire fences, giving up our cameras and, normally at such site, relinquishing our passport; but because we were with Maison de la France we were allowed entrance into the gift shop where we were held prisoners for nearly an hour, and many succumbed to purchasing TV and keychains.

After all the data (I spared you some details) and shuttled around by a guide who is German but speaks English with a French accent, we were taken to the site of the first test Concorde, a small, narrow plane boasting 60’s orange decor. Only 24 were ever made (including 4 test planes) to fly beyond the speed of sound at 18,000 meters into the stratosphere carrying 100 passengers who, for about 8000 euros each, were able to buy themselves a few more hours in Paris or New York and see two sunrises in 3-1/2 hours.

After the accident at CDG (Paris), wherein the rear tires exploded and punctured the fuel tank in the wing, Concorde stopped flying in 2003. It was not economically fesible…not to mention it made a deafening noise, polluted terribly and required one crewmember to open valves en route and siphon 10 tons of kerosene from one chamber to another to stablize the plane on takeoffs and landings.

However, it did provide some breakthroughs, like cooperation between European nations (UK and France) and technical advances like electronic control systems, telon, ABS breaks and carbon fibers.

For me, it was one of those experiences that is more interesting in retrospect than it was at the time.

A long way from Santa Fe

Without any commercial flights, Santa Fe poses the challenge of international getaways. Of course, those of us who live there and love it deem it worthwhile but, in fact, it's a pain in the butt and one sound alternative is to plan to fly from Albuquerque to a coast city, spend a night or two and continue on, thus enjoying the 5 to 7 hours from the east coast to Europe rather than the 24 hours I just spent getting from my Santa Fe home to meet up with a group of travel agents in Toulouse, France's 4th largest city, in southwestern France. That's right, 24 hours! Santa Fe to ABQ, ABQ to DEN, DEN to IAH (Houston), IAH to CDG (Paris), CDG to TOU. Whew.

This was the only way I could find to take advantage of the free trip offered me by Maison de la France, the French Tourism Bureau, which hosts FAM (familiarization trips) for travel agents around the globe. The fact that France is one of the top destinations in the world is due to this aggressive national effort at marketing and PR. The US does not have a national tourism office. Hmmm. But after reading of the round-about way I had to employ to get here, one might wonder if it's worth it.

Upgrading...perchance to sleep

Well, maybe not if one had to fly coach, or steerage, as it seems to me, but I was reluctantly willing even to do that for a free weeklong trip to France. But, as luck would have it (and I am a "lucky person"), the young lad with whom I checked in at the Air France counter in Houston was very sweet and when I asked him if he could change my return dates (which multiple attempts to Air France during the past 3 months had turned up only dead ends), he did so without hesitation. I then boldly asked if I could be upgraded to business class. He said he didn't think so but I could check at the boarding gate. 

Lo and behold, an hour later, after the humiliation of partially disrobing and unpacking for "security," it was his same self who manned that counter and I greeted him like a long-lost friend. Within minutes, after a brief consultation between him and his superior, I was given the last business class seat -- no up-charge, nothing but "enjoy your trip!" Indeed, I did -- reclining fully, eating hot gourmet dishes on real plates with silverware and linen, and imbibing as much fine French wine as I could want served by gracious hosts; full-size blankets and pillows (not puffed postage stamps), hot towels, noise-canceling headphones and 4 feet of legroom! I didn't have to justify my request in any way, although I was fully prepared to say I was on a diplomatic mission or senior editor of National Geographic Traveler, or whatever it would have taken. My advice: ask! You have nothing to lose.

Now, after a long hot shower with aromatic shampoo and body wash, a nap on a comfy king-size bed at the Sofitel (400 euros a night is the posted price!), a walk around the old town of Toulouse, "the rose city" (so called because of its brick buildings, some structures dating back to the 10th century) and dining on the regional dish of "cassoulet" (beans and duck) in the charming ambiance of an old wooden barge moored on the Canal Midi, which flows over 200 miles to the Mediterranean, jet lag is overtaking me and I must sleep to be ready for the next 5 days of intense explorations of the region. More soon.