Grotte de Niaux, Carcassonne, and Rocamadour, France

If you're wondering how you pronounce 2/3rds of the town names in the title of this post, I have to admit that I don't know even though I asked my friend numerous times to pronounce them before and after making my best attempts. But what I've learned about my mouth is that there is no way any amount of practice will contort it to say most French words including "heureux" (happy).  I generally try a couple of times, then sigh and say "content" which is when my French friend rolls her eyes and says, "Oh Neekole. You speak French like a Russian!"  This is true, but in order to deflect criticism, I'll tell you that my husband's pronunciation of anything French is much much worse than mine.  In fact, my daughter tries hard to walk her father through the pronunciation of basic phrases, but he can't manage to say "eau" without sounding like he's making fun of either the French language or a slow person. In any event, no matter how you pronounce Niaux, or Rocamadour, you don't want to miss them.

We were only in Toulouse a few hours (12 to be exact) before our French friends decided that we risked becoming bored if we didn't travel to see something new, and since it's impossible to say, "We're just happy to see the inside of a house" without sounding like you're more interested in the rest of Europe than in your friend's homeland, we smiled broadly and said "oui" when they suggested we see prehistoric cave drawings in a town near the border with Andorra and Spain. I won't tell you the expression on my kids' faces when we told them we would be leaving the big screen TV they knelt in front of and worshipped the night before, but you could almost see their souls reaching toward the yard as we backed out of the driveway.

If you see a map of prehistoric cave drawings, you will notice that most of the locations are in the south of France.  We had a couple of hours in the car to ponder why artists for 14,000 years have flocked to the same region. Maybe it was the fields of wild flowers or the angle of the light off of wheat colored grass lands. I'm sure there were no tax advantages to prehistoric artists, but you have to admit that something must be in the air when people from cave men to Van Gogh find inspiration in the same area of the same country. We didn't determine an answer to this question by the time we arrived in Niaux since my son busily entertained our friends with third-person accounts of his "awesomeness". In fact, suggestions that there is a picture of him in the dictionary next to the word "awesome" inspired amounts of laughter you don't normally associate with the French.

The Grotte de Niaux
Lascaux is the most famous cave in France, but it is closed now in order to preserve the drawings.  You can see Lascaux II--a reproduction of the first--but it would be hard to get excited about seeing a reproduction of just about anything famous--which is why I've never been to a wax museum. The Grotte de Niaux is still open to the public, but you must make a reservation since the number of visitors are limited in order to reduce the effects of body heat within the cave. This point you will have to take on faith since it's colder inside the cave than a late fall day and you'll probably be ill equipped to deal with this much cold in the middle of summer. I was lucky that my son refused to wear his jacket on macho grounds and I was able to pretend it was just more convenient to wear the jacket than hold it in my arms. If you go to Niaux (I think that may rhyme), also bring shoes with good grips since the moist rocks are incredibly slippery.

Almost as interesting as the expansive caverns, side tunnels, and drawings of bison, horses, ibex and deer were graffiti from as far back as the 1600s. There was even more graffiti in the 1700s, but the most graffiti seemed to come from the following century. It's important to note this so the next time you hear someone say that today's kids are going to hell in a hand basket, you can tell them that 19th century teenagers were no great shakes either.

Carcassonne
If you travel from Genoa, Italy to Toulouse via highway, Carcassonne will appear to the right like a less shiny vision of Camelot. It is the largest fortress city in Europe boasting two sets of defensive walls-- the inner wall was built by the Romans and the outer wall dates to Medieval times. It was a stronghold of the Cathars, but not strong enough when the Pope declared Cathars to be heretics and the town was sacked in 1209. If you're wondering what one would have to say to be considered a heretic in the 1200s, declaring material goods evil, and recognizing only baptism as a sacrament would put your name firmly onto the "to be slaughtered" list.

Carcassonne is said to have gotten its name from an earlier siege when Charlemagne's troops circled, then tried to starve the town. A woman named Madame Carcas (not the prettiest French surname) convinced the townspeople to catapult a well-fed pig at the troops which convinced Charlemagne that a people who could throw pork at their enemy after a lengthy siege could never be starved-out.

So, the history of Carcassonne is both funny and disturbing, but the modern town takes the word "quaint" to a new level with winding narrow cobble-stoned roads and abundant stone-walled shops on both sides.  And as lovely as it is during the day, the town is even prettier at night with spotlights illuminating major architectural features like the stone walls, spires, and towers, and garden cafes serving typically delicious French food well into the evening.  In fact, if you're going to ask someone to marry you, you have a better chance of that person saying "yes" in a cafe in Carcassonne, than just about any other place in the world.

Rocamadour
Rocamadour is another lovely town which you will find holding onto the side of a cliff for dear life. This is the impression you get when you approach the town from a hillside road across the valley, and once you reach the valley, you may wonder why anyone would hang a town on a precipice instead of building it onto perfectly good flatland, but we probably don't invade neighboring cities in the US enough to appreciate that not only seizing the high ground, but holding it for the rest of your life might be a very good idea.

Rocamadour has been a pilgrimage site since the well-preserved body of a man named Zacheus, later known as Amadour was found in 1166. Legend has it that Amadour entertained Jesus in his home before "moving to France" making his remains quite old when they were discovered. As with much of history, who Amadour was and how old he is is the subject of much debate and you are as likely to posit as credible a hypothesis as anyone. My theory is that he had a mother-in-law with bad knees so he moved to the hillside to get away from her. To avoid the wrath of his wife, he pretended the move was solely based on a desire to build a chapel. Later, other men flocked to the site in order to escape their mother-in-laws, and voila (as the French would say), a pilgrimage site was born.