Tag: art

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La Trek Toulouse

One of my favorite types of destinations in Europe are the small cities and towns that have retained their medieval charm, often with a castle overlooking the cobblestone streets and centuries-old buildings. Some time ago, I had saved an article from a travel website citing the top ten best small cities in Europe to visit, and Toulouse, France, was one of them. The only thing I knew about Toulouse at the time was that someone famous had that in their name. Turns out it was Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa. (Which would’ve been quite a mouthful when his exasperated mother used his complete name, as mothers often do, when she was fed up with him for not doing his chores; like throwing out the contents of the chamber pot into the street, where it belonged.) Frankly, if you would’ve told me that Toulouse-Latrec was the most famous Pure Finder ever, I might’ve believed you. What’s a Pure Finder you ask? Well, a Pure Finder collected dog feces from the streets and sold it to tanneries. It was used in the processing of animal hides. Yes, that was an actual occupation. You never know what you’re gonna learn on Bald Sasquatch!

I’m guessing that most people probably feel the same way about Toulouse-Lautrec as I did: it’s a name which sounds familiar, but perhaps you have no idea why, like I used to before I got all cultured and everything. Maybe you thought he invented the horse-drawn seed drill? No, that was Jethro Tull in 1701. Maybe you thought he was a guy they named a steam-powered prosthetic dildo after? No, that was a dildo called “Steely Dan III from Yokohama” in the novel Naked Lunch… the band Steely Dan was in fact named after that. I do think it’s kinda weird that you were thinking about dildos, but hey, I’m not here to judge. Although maybe you were subconsciously tying it all together, because Henri was famous for painting prostitutes, so I can see the correlation. Hey, while we’re on the topic, the word “dildo” translates to “godemiché” in French, which looks a lot like “god’s mitt.” Makes sense to me.

Anyway, as an artist he had to make a living because most of those historical painters’ artworks only went stratospheric in price until after they died, and he didn’t want to do that yet, so as you can see in the picture on the right he also painted advertisements for toilet paper companies.

I rented a small flat outside Toulouse on this semi-charming street, although the apartment wasn’t flat at all so I don’t know what the Brits go all on about. My gracious new landlady gave me instructions on getting into town, recommending I take the subway rather than pay the exorbitant prices for parking. It turns out Toulouse mass transit is so simple even a mass transit moron like me was able to figure it out, and so off I went to see the sights.

Per Google: Toulouse is the fourth-largest city in France and the capital of the Occitanie region, located in the country’s southwest along the Garonne River. Known as La Ville Rose (the Pink City) for its distinct terracotta brick architecture, it is a major hub for Europe’s aerospace industry, a lively university town, and has a mass transit system that even morons can figure out.

Also, it’s sister city is Toutight.

The subway dumped me out right in the middle of Toulouse’s most popular area: Place du Capitole, the large central square housing the city hall. There’s also a museum in there called the Salle des Illustres, but I didn’t visit it because, well, I don’t actually know why. I wandered the streets of Toulouse all afternoon and thought I’d gotten the gist of things, but I also had planned to go back on the tail end of my trip since I planned to drive all over southern France and return to Toulouse for my return flight, but upon my return I just didn’t feel like going back into Toulouse. Man, I’m such a lousy travel blogger. But hey, how many travel blogs have you read that talk about dildos? So yeah, at least I have a niche market cornered.

I’m lumping all these photos into one gallery just to give you the flavor of the city. The top three photos could have had 100 more added with essentially the same look. To me, Toulouse is like a small medieval town except a whole lot bigger and without a castle. I simply wandered the streets to and fro, marveling at how beautiful street after street was. I came away thinking it really would be a nice place for a romantic getaway. The city is absolutely charming everywhere you turn, and when you combine that with French cuisine and plenty of shopping, well, I can see a happy couple enjoying a weekend here; unless one of them likes to shop a bit too much and the other ends up irritated and then they have a big fight and don’t speak to each other for the rest of the trip.

As a lone traveler I get to dodge that risk (although I did lose a couple of arguments I had with myself), but I was once again a little miffed that so many of the French women (okay, all of them) abruptly and sometimes even rudely turned down my repeated requests for a french kiss. Even the ugly ones! I mean, what good does it do to have a whole kiss named after you but you refuse to do it? Hmmph. I couldn’t even find any bread labeled French Bread in the grocery store. Also, I ordered French Toast at a restaurant and all I got was toast. These French are scamming us, I tell you.

As usual, there were plenty of must-see cathedrals. Nowadays, after having seen approximately one million and thirteen cathedrals in Europe, I tend to pop in, snap a photo or two, and maybe ask God how he and the missus are doing, and then scamper back out into the sunshine. On one hand, they are beautiful and magnificent examples of the kind of architecture humans were capable of creating hundreds of years ago, with ceiling heights that go all the way to the top, but on the other hand they do all look pretty similar. Plus I get annoyed that religions invested so much money into gaudiness instead of using it to help the poor, or even those worse off, like bad travel bloggers.

The Pont Neuf, which is French for “New Bridge,” (which doesn’t reflect well on French foresight and intelligence, because it’s pretty stupid to still be calling something new when it’s now lasted almost four hundred years) is a famous bridge despite the stupid name, and was completed in 1632, and is considered a masterpiece of the Renaissance, again, despite its stupid name. Its construction was difficult, especially since they hadn’t invented Bridgemaker 3.0 software yet, so it took 88 stupid years to complete.

You can always tell when a city is a bustling tourist mecca when they have small trains or horse-drawn carriages to ferry tourists around so the pickpockets can tell who they are. Toulouse also had a lot of bike lanes, a bit like Amsterdam, with the difference being bikers were few and far between, but those who did take advantage suddenly came upon you like bats out of hell. I nearly got run into more than once because I kept forgetting to wave my baguette around before crossing the lane.

Since I didn’t make it a point to see every last cathedral and old building, I took a photo of a picture mounted in the apartment I rented so there’s no way this entry didn’t cover all the Toulouse sights.

After spending a day in Toulouse I hit the road to set out and explore as many small French towns as ChatGPT offered up, because for this trip I had decided to try using ChatGPT as my tour guide, which mostly worked pretty well. I figured that way at least I wasn’t likely to miss something I should’ve seen. However, since all these little towns kind of became a blur to me and I have no idea in what order I saw them all, I’m just gonna start alphabetically and work my way down. So, first up: Albi.

ALBI

(“I already said Albi.” “I know, but I have to make it look official.” “Okay, fine, have it your way.” “Okay fine.” “Fine.”)

Albi is town of about 50,000 people, whose inhabitants are called Albigensians, not Albinos like I thought. The city is on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

It was easy to tour Albi because all of its most important bits are pretty much in one place. You just have to look for the bricks. You’ll see in a second, but I gotta say whoever was in the brick business when they were building up Albi must’ve brought in a lot of french bread, if you know what I mean. I asked AI to estimate the number of bricks it took to make the whole Albi Episcopal Complex, and it came up with an estimate of around 60 million bricks, 22 million of which make up the cathedral itself, which is touted to be the largest brick building in the world. If you laid 60 million bricks in one perfectly straight line, the line would reach around the Earth more than 300 times. All together, the bricks would have the mass of roughly 730 Statues of Liberty, or 120 same-sized statues of Trump, although none of the contractors would have been paid for that work, as is his habit.

Rumor has it that when the pope asked for a quote for the entire project, when he saw the bill he said, “Well I’ll be,” and his assistants thought he meant the name of the whole city should be changed to Albi. Etymology is a passion of mine, you see.

As you drive into town the Big Ass Cathedral (aka the Cathedral of Saint Cecilia of Albi) dominates the skyline, as I’m sure was intended. Albi also has a New Bridge as well as an Old Bridge, apparently the French naming stupidity wasn’t restricted to one town. I mean, c’mon, they could’ve gone for Pristine Bridge, Contemporary Bridge, Modern Bridge, Newer Than The Other Bridge, or even Bridget Fonda. If I ever build a bridge I’m gonna name it Bridget Fonda.

Above you can see I took pictures of three different bridges. One of those is the New, one is the Old, and the other is the Forgotten Middle Child. It’s up to you to figure out which is which, if you must. But if you do get musty, and get it right, you qualify to receive… ta da! A free autograph from me.*

*As long as you send me the request with a self-addressed-stamped envelope and whatever you want signed plus a twenty euro or twenty dollar note (either is fine, I’m bi-currency, to the chagrin of my parents) to cover processing fees and a donation to climate change or maybe Taco Bell or something.

Here you can see the cathedral in all its bricky glory. From left to right, I took a picture so you could see all the bricks, the next photo goes all the way to the dome… oh wait, that’s my dome. The next is of the Taco Bell Tower. (For some reason as I write this I got in the mood for a burrito.) And that fortress-looking thing in the last picture is the cathedral itself. 22 million bricks. If you had to take inventory of 22 million bricks and counted one per second over an eight hour shift, working six days a week, it would take you almost two and a half years to count them all. And that’d just be for the cathedral. For the whole complex, it would take over six and a half years. And that’s only if you took no vacations or sick days, like an American Taco Bell employee.

The inside is as ornate as you might expect. Construction was begun in 1282 and took over 200 years. The completion of the 78 meter-high tower was finished in 1492, the same year Christopher Columbus was searching for… a way off his boat before his disgruntled crew killed him for being such a lousy navigator… and for not offering tacos for lunch.

Right next to the cathedral is the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec art museum, dedicated mainly to the work of the painter– you’ll never guess this: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec– who was born in Albi. The 13th-century building in which it is housed was originally the palace of the bishop of Albi.

I decided to go into the museum so I could become an expert on Toulouse-Lautrec, but I quickly realized I really didn’t give a shit, and so I snapped some shots and exited before they figured out how I had snuck in. I did see a few paintings and statues of naked ladies though, so it wasn’t all a waste of time. The white sculpture of the woman wasn’t actually made by Lautrec. She just reminded me of an alien in a sci-fi movie I can’t remember the name of. She looks like she has a giraffe-like alien neck, although I think it’s supposed to be her shoulder. Anyway, if you want to guess the movie and send it to me, I’ll give you the same autograph deal I mentioned above, even if you’re wrong. But don’t forget the twenty bucks.

Speaking of naked ladies, I’m a little confused as to whether they allow you to eat while resting your head on a woman’s breast, or if they specialize in breast meat from whatever animal a “Le P” is. They were closed, which sucked, so I had to nip my research in the bud and go off to milk jokes from another areola of the city.

The town surrounding the cathedral complex is very cute and just as brickalicious as the cathedral. It was actually a lot like Toulouse except not nearly as big and with a different name. In the last picture of the above group I saw that sign: “Achat or Argent.” Now, I know Argent, they had a killer rock song in 1972 called, “Hold Your Head Up.” I’ve never heard of the band Achat, so I know I’d vote for Argent, but I figured the whole voting system would be in French so I didn’t bother to vote.

This is a statue of some guy.

Behind the cathedral is this beautiful garden. And Aaal-be, that’s all for Albi.

Okay, I know we only got to the “A’s,” but this all seems long enough for one entry. Although I will close on something I found to be rather cute and endearing. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll remember that not so long ago I did an entry on my neighbor’s dog, Mel, who adopted me as her best friend and quickly made herself a mainstay of my daily life by hopping over her owner’s fence and then hopping over mine virtually every day. Most mornings I’d walk out of my bedroom to find this scene at my door:

Well, while I was gone she would still jump over both fences and I suppose wonder why I wasn’t coming out to greet her. Her owner sent me the following photo while I was away, taken after they went looking for her and tried to bribe her to jump back over the fence. But she wasn’t having it, as you can tell by the look on her face. It was heartbreaking and heartwarming all at the same time.

It’s nice to be loved.

Anyway, we are reunited and she’s happy again!

Au revoir for now, until I post the rest of my French Adventure!

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We Lost Our Marbles in Norway

I don’t know about you, but I never gave a lot of thought as to the source of marble. I suppose I figured there were simply marble quarries here and there and that was that. So when I saw “Visit a Marble Mine” on the cruise excursion list, I was all over that like a shooter lining up a dead duck (you would only understand that if you played marbles as a kid). I played marbles a little bit way back when, but my parents made me stop after a slight misunderstanding about how one obtains more cat’s eyes. Anyway, it turns out that only 5% of the world’s marble is actually mined from mines, so that means there’s a 95% chance you didn’t know about marble mines. I think that’s the way the new math works.

The excursion began with a bus ride into the Norwegian countryside. The excursion was supposed to take us on the Atlantic Road, apparently one of the most beautiful roadways in the world, but we wouldn’t have known either way because it was almost always nighttime where we were. The bus stopped to take us on a scenic walk but it was, y’know, dark, so we didn’t see a lot, but what we could and did see was beautiful and peaceful. The monument you see above has a headline that translates to: “In memory of those who died at sea.” I believe that underneath it says, “I died a gruesome, painful, and lonely death in an icy cold ocean and all I got was this lousy monument.”

And no, we didn’t see this scene from the expedition brochure.

But we did see the tunnel leading into the Bergtatt Marble Mine from the bus. While “visiting a marble mine” hadn’t made it onto my bucket list (had I even thought of it, it still would have only qualified for my canister list, which, as everyone knows, is a less important container than a bucket), it was still strangely interesting, and almost disconcerting, to be driving into the side of a mountain, especially without the usual accompaniment of “Hi ho! Hi ho! It’s off to work we go!” I mean, I tried, but all the other tourists just looked at me like I had lost my marbles and Carolyn kept whacking me telling to shut up.

Once we disembarked, they suited us up in hard hats and life vests. Life vests you ask? Well, this particular marble mine has a river running through it, so the mine tour is provided via watercraft. So we got to be sailors and miners in one fell swoop! (Fell swoop is a weird phrase. Stare at it and repeat it: Fell swoop. Fell swoop. Weird. Although it wouldn’t be a bad name for a rock band. “And heeeeeere’s Fell Swooooooooop!” The crowd goes wild!)

The watercraft looked more like crates than boats, but I assumed they were sea-worthy -er, mine-worthy -er, river-in-a-mine-worthy. Anyway, these caves were created by the water and mining and they are still mining in other parts of the mountain, but this section was turned into a tourist attraction and a concert venue as well as being a great place to hide a dead body.

So off we sailed into the depths of the mountain, feeling rather like the dwarfs in Lord of the Rings, except taller, and less swarthy, and mostly not fictitious, and glad that we weren’t instead feeling anything like one of the dwarfs in Snow White, mostly because the Lord of the Rings dwarfs could kick their butts, which would give a whole new meaning to the name “Bashful.”

Gimli and Glóin.

While the rafts sailed through the mountain, peaceful music wafted over us from deep within the caves. I think the song was “Sweet Child of Mine,” albeit with violins and no singing and with a completely different set of notes and no guns or roses anywhere. But it has “mine” in the title so they should have. I actually thought about the “It’s a Small World” boat ride from Disneyland as we meandered through the still water, although I was extremely grateful that they didn’t play that particular song. It’s the mother of all earworms.

Apparently the marble –”It’s a small world after all!”– from this particular mine is a lot denser than the marble they usually use for statues so it normally takes too long to create a statue from this particular marble, -“It’s a small world after all!”- so when they do of course they use it to make a woman with her boob hanging out. Psssht, men… am I right?

The ceiling was occasionally low enough –”It’s a small world after all!”– to bonk your head if you weren’t careful, ergo the hard hats. So these are close-ups as to what marble looks like before it’s mined as well as what my head looks like post-bonk. “It’s a small world after all!”

They showed off some marble creations which they could make because they weren’t going to sell them so it didn’t matter if it took forever to make, but get this: most of the marble mined here is actually used to make glossy paper. –”It’s a small world after all!”– Who would’ve thunk? Like the origins of marble, I hadn’t given a lot of thought as to how glossy paper is made (my friend Mark Meyer would know though, since he’s a paper maven). So when I heard that, I was astonished. Amazed. Astounded. “It’s a small world after all!” Dumbfounded. Verklempt. And ready to blow my brains out if I hear “It’s a small world after all!” in my head one more time. I’m just sayin’, if this is my last blog entry you’ll know why.

At the end of the tour, we were served some marble soup (I think) and a viewing of a promotional and educational nature from Bergtatt Opplevelser, the mining company. That hall is also where they have some concerts. I was a little baffled as to how well a concert might work there because I couldn’t understand most of what they were saying, and it was even mostly in English (I think). It all sounded rather echo-y. The video production and presentation was also kind of cutely amateurish, as if some miners had put it all together one drunken night without the help of anyone who knew anything about making a presentation. But they meant well (despite the depiction of the Nazi salute there on the screen), and overall we had a good time.

As a result of our trip inside a marble mine, Carolyn now wants to decorate our next kitchen like this. At least with this, we won’t ever lose our marbles! She proofreads and works on these blogs with me so I’m anticipating a big whack on my shoulder after she reads that she wants this kitchen.

I’ll finish up this entry with a short tour of Hammerfest, voted by me as one of the top five city names in all the world. No one screws with anyone from Hammerfest, even if they were only educated in a videregående skole (which means high school). The school doesn’t need a mascot. As soon as any rival school sees the word Hammerfest they pretty much run away screaming with their hands over their heads. Also, notice the straight lines on the hill? Those are to help prevent avalanches. Landslides and avalanches are the natural hazards in Norway responsible for most losses of human life. I believe killing oneself due to It’s a Small World earworms comes in third.

As you can see, not only is it somewhat industrial –Norway is awash in oil and gas resources and has done an outstanding job of protecting them for the benefit of all Norwegians– but the town itself is just as cute as a bug, with snow-covered houses covering the hills overlooking where the Norwegian Sea meets the Barents Sea for a spot of tea. Hammerfest is pretty much at the tippy top of Norway, making it the northernmost town called Hammerfest in the entire world.

That also made it one of the colder places on our trip, hitting 17°F (-8°C) while we were there. So we donned our green sausage coats and inspected the local ambulance before walking a couple of hundred meters to a monument and then slinking back to the ship, where we stomped the snow and ice from our boots and and loudly demanded hot chocolate.

The monument itself is a “meridian column” (there goes another thing off the bucket list!) and commemorates the scientific measurements needed to see how obese the earth has become and whether it needs to go on a diet. Speaking of which, do you know the only large country (as opposed to all those small island countries where they give birth to pre-sumos) with a higher obesity rate than the United States? Kuwait. Maybe they should stop kuwaiting for take-out.

As you can see the views and scenery from the area around the monument was absolutely gorgeous, so both the marker and the scenery made it a monumental visit despite the brevity of the stop.

And off we sailed again into the wild dark blue yonder, ready for our next excursion while viewing scenes like the below from the comfort of our ship, hot chocolate in hand and “It’s a small world after all!” worming around in my brain. Dammit!

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It’s a Small World after all!