We were in two minds about going to Cite l’Espace. It would take at least a couple of hours, and leave little time to reach Millau in the afternoon. We decided to go there, then decide whether to go in. Of course, once we were there, going in assumed a kind of inevitability. It was rather good, with real stages from Ariane rockets, a full size Ariane 5, a Soyuz capsule used to visit Mir, and an actual Mir space station that you could walk through. The best part was a partially cut away Viking rocket engine.
While waiting for the Imax presentation about a French astronaut’s experiences in the International Space Station, there was a promo of highlights of the Midi Pyrenees region. I caught a 2 second glimpse of an intriguing Medieval hilltop village and enough of the name to find it in Google Maps. Cordes sur Ciel. We’re there now, only about 65km from Toulouse.
I booked a room here from the Imax theatre. Camille took us off the A68 a few km short of Albi and along a series of tiny roads barely wider than the car, through a few villages and mere clusters of houses. We had no idea where we were going. There was a straightforward road, the D922, to Cordes sur Ciel, but that was too simple for Camille. Perhaps this route was shorter overall. We saw a lot of the French countryside.
Of course the village is quite beautiful, and touristy, with up-market artisan shops, but it’s magical here after all the day visitors leave, night falls, the lights turn on and the streets are almost deserted. Not a breath of wind, half moon in a clear sky. Half a litre of good house white helps, of course.
I had to park at the base of the hill while we walked up, found the Hotel Raymond VII in the main street at the top of the hill, and reserved a table at one of the restaurants. I couldn’t lug the suitcases up there from the car, it was quite a climb on rough cobbles. I eventually found a parking space in a quiet street near the top, walked down, and drove the car up. It was a pretty wild ride. Rough, undulating cobbles in a narrow street with tortuous, steeply climbing bends. Some tourists are just so stupid, like sheep. Actually, sheep aren’t that stupid. They were standing in the street, with no idea that it was a vehicular road and that I really couldn’t stop because it was so steep and rough. I got to my parking spot without killing anyone or damaging the car.
Anyway, finding out about this village was one of the serendipitous things that happen on holiday, especially when you have a car and no immediate commitments. Even the meal, in a family run restaurant in the village square, was unusually good. The hotel was a surprise too. Our room is about 28 square metres, plus bathroom, with a smashing view. It’s a traditional room. The beams supporting the ceiling are about 300mm x 200mm cross section, huge.
No photos tonight. I forgot to ask the hotel proprietor about wifi when we checked in, and there’s no password info in the room. No, some photos just arrived from my phone after I enabled mobile data for photos. We have about 10GB each of data to use in 2 weeks after I topped up the Vodafone accounts this morning. Four weeks since we landed at Heathrow!
Hours later, after the moon went down, the sky was so dark that Anne could see the constellation Orion low in the sky, upside down, and the Pleiades.