After starting my French adventure in Toulouse, I took to the road with only a loose agenda in mind. When looking at a map, it seemed as if no matter where I might end up, I’d be within an hour or two of some quaint French town with medieval charms, more often than not featuring a cool castle. So I thought I’d just putter around the south of France in my rental car in a quest to see as many castles as possible, like I was on some castley-Pokémon hunt.

Speaking of rental cars, I have a serious travel tip for renting a car in a country like France: before you leave the parking lot, first figure out how to change the car’s language to your native tongue, then familiarize yourself with all the controls, down to the most basic, like how to start the windshield wipers, where the hazard light button is, and how the built-in bidet system works (that’s only necessary in France and Japan).

Nowadays, new cars have more electronic options than a jet fighter, and they’re all hiding randomly inside LCD screens using an operating system as intuitive as ASML’s Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine. What is an ASML Extreme Ultraviolet lithography machine you might ask, mostly because you want to avoid clicking on that link? Well, it is widely considered to be the most complicated machine ever built by humans. Almost as complicated as working that analogy into this paragraph.

Honestly, you don’t want to be looking down at your pudgy fingers jabbing at an unfamiliar computer screen just to figure out how to turn on the air conditioning when driving at 80 km/hr while you’re tailgating a motorcycle in front of a school which is next to a donut shop with a parking lot full of cops watching every car go by while they finish off their fourth glazed donut. Instead, you can use your favorite AI program ahead of time to help with that: you just tell it the make, model, and year of the car and before you know it you have your own personal car whiz quite literally sitting in the palm of your hand (this works for cheese too). Plus it probably can even work the ASML Extreme Ultraviolet lithography machine in case you need to pop into your local Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography Machines ‘R Us store to produce some last minute Extreme Ultraviolet lithographs. (At this point, with all this repetitive keywording, any serious engineer or whoever works those machines may wonder how the hell he or she ended up on this site after doing a search on Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography Machines.) Hey there! Nice to have you on board! So how’s the Extreme Ultraviolet lithographic business holding up these days?

As you can see, the dashboard on my rental car was actually a little less complicated than the first example, but there was still lots of technology in it. The car constantly scans the road and then posts the speed limit right on your dashboard, which is handy because speed cameras are all over the place in France. However, no technology is perfect, because although it’s a little difficult to see in the photo, it’s telling me the speed limit is 10, because it misread a sign that actually said “70.” So it kept dinging at me perhaps thinking I was ripping through a school crossing like a crazed lunatic or something. I’m a little surprised it didn’t shut down the car or shoot me with a taser… today’s car electronics are getting a little overbearing sometimes. I think we’re in a slightly painful transition from doing our own driving to self-driving cars doing it all.

Anyway, here are some highlights of the small French towns I visited, in alphabetical order:

Béziers

Driving into Béziers can be a little hazardous because obviously all the roads leading into the town are very curvy… and if you don’t know why then you just missed a dad joke. And no, it has nothing to do with the late, great Dolly Parton. Béziers is one of the oldest cities in France, dating back to 575 BCE (Before Computers Existed), according to ChatGPT. With a population of a little over 80,000, its main claim to fame is that it has more people than any town in the world with a population under 80,000.

The skyline is dominated by the Béziers Cathedral, a Roman Catholic church that dates back to the thirteenth century. The current structure is built on the ruins of the previous one that was destroyed during The Massacre at Béziers in 1209, which is when the Catholic Crusaders killed pretty much everyone in town, heretics and Catholics alike, because they didn’t have anything like skin color or political bumper stickers to tell them apart. When the soldiers asked how they should handle that problem, the now-famous phrase, “Kill them all and let God sort them out” was uttered, and that’s exactly what they did. Boy religion is fun, isn’t it? Anyway, at least we got a memorable catchphrase out of all that killing, so it wasn’t a complete waste.

It does look pretty cool from afar, especially when you don’t have to see all the bloodstains.

When you’re standing atop its hill, the scenery is marvelous. To be fair, sitting atop the hill doesn’t change the view much, so that’s okay too.

This is a piece of unconventional and incongruous art located at the entrance of the Hôtel La Prison, a former prison converted into a hotel next to the Béziers Cathedral. Or maybe it’s because Béziers was the site of the first encounter with the alien creature whose likeness they stole for the Alien franchise. I’m not sure, really, I hustled past just in case it was faking being a statue.

If you’re like most of my readers and spend a lot of time memorizing all the writing in baldsasquatch.com because it’s all so, oh I don’t know, transcendent, riveting, exquisite, masterful, luminous, thesaurusy, and hilarious (I’m thinking of adding verse markers like the Bible so when people are quoting me they can find the texts easily), then you’ll remember that I said something about telling when a town is touristy when it has small trains or horse-drawn carriages for tourists. I don’t often ride those, but I decided to in Béziers on a whim. Unfortunately, it put the whim in whimpy, as you can tell by my excited facial expression in the first photo. At least in that selfie I had my eyes open. Maybe I’ve traveled too much because I thought it was a complete waste of time. Not that I had anything better to do. Still, we saw some famous (at least now that I saw it) canal locks, a fountain or two, and the same view we had before we got on the train.

Poor Béziers gets another bad rap from me because this was the scene that resulted from my excitedly following street signs to see a “Roman Amphitheater.” I wondered why I was the only one walking in that direction. Because, yeah, break out the confetti, this is the Roman Amphitheater. In modern terms, I guess you’d call this theatre off-off-off-off-off Broadway. Maybe the Spinal Tap / Puppet Show might’ve made it look full, or a French Trump rally.

In the end, Béziers was a pretty enough city, but let’s just say I didn’t buy a Béziers refrigerator magnet.

Bruniquel

While bustling Béziers main claim to fame is being France’s 59th most populous city, Bruniquel is right on its tail with a whopping 561 inhabitants and counting, that is if you really believe that child was his.

Despite the population density and throngs of tourists, I managed to worm my way through the small streets to grab a few pictures, even remembering to point the camera at myself once in a while just to prove the zombie apocalypse hadn’t arrived.

There are two feudal medieval castles that dominate the village, one called “old” and the other “young.” The ‘young’ castle was built in the 15th century, which means I can go back to calling myself young again.

The “young” castle is home to a museum of prehistory exhibiting “treasures of Bruniquel” found in several caves near the castles. These caves have ancient wall paintings that were damaged by overenthusiastic and incredibly stupid graffiti cleaners in 1991, so we aren’t allowed inside to see them anymore. The caves also include evidence of Neanderthal activity, the descendants of which probably became graffiti cleaners.

In those days, fireplaces had multiple uses, including cooking, heating, and tying heretics to chairs and leaving them there until they were very well done.

Additional tortures were dispensed by making prisoners walk down stairs with a very high last step, as well as forcing them to listen to old records before the phonograph was even invented.

Mostly due to this travel blog and other famous things I might have done, I am of course constantly being asked to give presentations and speeches to packed houses, and Bruniquel was no exception. The chairs only look empty because the photo was taken right when I had them rolling in the aisles, and things are fairly steep around there.

A couple of historical landmark buildings that just didn’t seem all that landmarky to me. But I suppose if anything gets old enough, it deserves a plaque or two. That’s my usual explanation for the pictures above my bed anyway.

Beautiful views approaching, and from, the castle walls. Hard to imagine storming that castle without 500 meter long ladders or really powerful pogo sticks. You can still see the leftover bales of hay laying around from the last catapult attacks; they used them in the first wave just to say “hay!” because people were much more polite back then, other than all the killing, stealing, torturing, cruelty, and bigotry.

Of corpse, it’s always necessary to have gates in a cemetery because there are so many people dying to get in. I think I’ve used that joke before but this time I think I really killed it.

In the end, Bruniquel was actually a bit more enjoyable for me than Béziers, but I didn’t buy a Bruniquel refrigerator magnet either.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne features one of the more extensive and best preserved medieval fortresses around. The Cité de Carcassonne –a UNESCO heritage site– is a medieval fortress dating back to the Gallo-Roman period – which lasted from the1st century BC (Before Computers) to the 5th century AD (After Disco). I think it was famous for the invention of cheap wine too.

I actually stayed overnight in Carcassonne near the citadel area. It was quite a bustling tourist destination, but when I got back home I thought I had more pictures than just the above, so I guess I was so wrapped up in the adventure that I forgot to take more.

Historically, the language spoken in Carcassonne was not French but Occitan, which is also an official language in Catalonia, which is in Spain but also the same general geographic area as Carcassonne and across the border from Andorra. Occitan has no official written form, and is slowly in danger of dying out. It’s hard to know for sure (because really, who the hell cares, ha ha), but there are less than a million first-language speakers of it currently. Despite those numbers, Google Translate actually does offer translations for it, like: “Me preocupa perque es ma lenga donc fotre,” which means, “I care because it’s my language so fuck off.” Ach. Occitanians are known for being rather crude, unless they’re speaking in High Occitan, which is a lot faster.

In the end, I didn’t buy a Carcassonne refrigerator magnet in any language.

Cordes-sur-Ciel

Cordes-sur-Ciel is a cute little town and is a member of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (The Most Beautiful Villages of France) Association. Of course, don’t get too excited about that because the association lists 184 of them. Perhaps The Least Beautiful Villages of France Association could publish a shorter, easier-to-handle list.

Until 1993, the town’s name was Cordes, a word thought to come from the Indo-European root “corte” meaning “rocky heights.” They say it was renamed Cordes-sur-Ciel to commemorate its height above the clouds over low-lying areas of the valley, but I think it was just to stop the word “Umbilical” from constantly being graffitied on the Cordes signs.

I ended up driving up some sort of non-touristy back way into the town which made me wonder if I was going to have French elderberry insults hurled at me by hordes of French people irritated that I was driving on the secret roads they try and hide from tourists. When I finally entered an area that had a parking lot, it was of course full, but I spotted a nearby empty parking space on the street and so slipped in there. The space was so tight against a medieval wall that I had to actually climb over the center console to exit and then reenter from the passenger side. I’m not as limber as, well, I’ve never been limber, so there was a point there where I almost thought I was gonna get stuck. That would’ve been kinda funny, but only in hindsight, which at one point during the human origami exercise was exactly what my rear view mirror was reflecting.

I was also uncertain as to the parking fees and where to even pay for them, so I took a chance and just skedaddled quickly up the hill, looked up and down the streets, took in a view, bought an ice cream cone (a necessity), and hustled back down to the car hoping I wouldn’t see a ticket on my windshield. When I got there, ice cream dripping from every corner of my beard, I was relieved to know that I wouldn’t have to swap license plates and a parking ticket with my neighbor’s car after all, and hightailed it out of there whooping with delight at how I’d beaten the system.

I didn’t even leave enough time to find a refrigerator magnet.

Lac ⁨(Lake) Salagou⁩

I’m guessing that the entire time you’ve been reading this entry you’ve been wondering what the title of it (“Francely my dear, I’ll go see a dam,” in case you forgot) has to do with anything.

Well dam… pardoning my French. I will endeavor to explain.

Using AI as your travel guide can have a lot of benefits, providing suggestions and ideas you might not have garnered from some of those travel sites that mostly want to sell you guided tours. (Don’t worry, I’ll get to the dam thing.)

I did run into a couple of downsides of that system. One of the attractions it sent me to was Lac ⁨Salagou⁩, enticing me with effusive praise of the natural scenery. Since I do sometimes get tired of seeing only human constructs in my sightseeing, I looked forward to seeing some natural beauty. However, other than a lake, which, sure, is pretty enough but not exactly uncommon, I saw this dam, which I admit I found quite intriguing. The whole thing seemed to be made of nothing but mid-sized stones. I couldn’t figure out how all of them even stayed in place. I’m guessing they bought Super Glue by the barrel or something. That held my interest a lot longer than looking at a lake, which actually isn’t saying much. So I went back to my phone to navigate my way back to civilization, calling this AI sightseeing detour a bit of a bust, because even though I was intrigued by the damn dam, I wouldn’t have driven an hour on curvy, dangerous roads just to see that.

And that’s where I encountered one of the downsides of relying on technology: it was wildernessy enough out there that there wasn’t any cell coverage, so suddenly I found myself on my own with no map or any idea as to how to get to wherever it was I’d want to go if I even knew where I wanted to go at all. So I just drove, looking for towns big enough to sell refrigerator magnets, and eventually found a signal. How I ended up in Denmark I’ll never know, but I was able to retrace my steps and get back to my French adventure eventually.

And of course I didn’t even bother looking for a dam refrigerator magnet.

Ah, this seems like a good halfway point. Most of the time, when you divide up an alphabetical listing in half, it goes A-L then M-Z. So I’ll stop at the “L’s” and let the “M’s,” starting with Minerve, headline the next entry. So now you can go back to doing whatever it is you wished like hell you were still doing before you got caught up in this mess. And now you have to wait for the next entry with bated breath, which, by the way, can be cured with a little mouthwash. Please. Your face is really close to the screen when you’re reading and it’s kinda bad, dude.

As they say in Occitan, “Obtenètz fòrça mai de petons franceses quand avètz una bona igièna bucala!”

And as they say in Frenchglish, “Au revoir for now!”

(Scroll down to see previous entries.)