Another Tiny Village and Gorges du Verdon

The next day of traveling brought more beautiful sights. We were told we were going to the Gorges du Verdon which is comparable to the Grand Canyon. We had breakfast and boarded the bus nice and early. Well, breakfast turned out to be the wrong idea for the journey that we embarked on. It makes sense to sit and think about it, but I didn't think about it before we left. Talk about some twisting and turning and extremely narrow roads with steep drops on the other side in order to get to this Grand Canyon place! And, we're talking about being on a bus with all of this! We often had to try and pull right up next to the rocky cliff in order to let cars get passed us who were coming from the other direction. I have never been so impressed with the abilities of the bus driver until today. And, like all vehicles in France, he was driving a manual transmission bus, through narrow roads and up hills. After my summer of learning to drive a stick shift I had great respect for our driver. I didn't get sick, but it would have been completely understandable.

We made a stop at this village first because, as I found out when we got there, we took the long route on our way to the Gorges. Long route? Oh yes, total traveling time 3 hours on a bus. And, it wasn't the three hours that got old, but the winding, twisting, turning roads. In hindsight I should have taken a video of this drive. Incredible! Anyway, this first village was very lovely. Here's a picture from up above.

Aren't the roofs just glorious? Such a beautiful old french town. The reason that it's from above can be better understood from the picture below. There is a tiny church set atop a hill. Legend/rumor/what have you says that one of the Knights of Templar was traveling and settled here, or left and then returned here, or sought out this place, I'm not entirely sure. I suppose that's why it's a legend. Regardless, there's a cute little church at the top of a hill, which you have to go on a massive climb to find. After three hours on a bus, I say bring it on!

Well, the route wasn't exactly well marked. I figured if we just kept moving uphill we would have found the route to get there. Well, we ended up on the wrong trail. It was a warm-up I told the others, feeling partly responsible for being so headstrong that "yes, we're moving up hill, of course this route is correct!" I took a picture on our way back to the correct route of this lovely little stream with giraffes! Not real ones, but still charming nevertheless!

And so began our climb up the stairs. Yes, look below. We climb all of those stairs! There were quite a few. I would have counted, if it weren't for the fact I was preoccupied with making sure I could still catch my breath and not die on the slippery 400 year old stone steps. The slippery steps became even more problematic coming back down the hill. I was wearing flip flops because we were going to a lake in the middle of the gorge. I was not properly outfitted for an intense climb. My flip flops plus slippery steps almost equaled a broken tail bone, sprained ankle, or a fractured skull - yes it was that treacherous. But, countless visitors to this area, doing this same climb for how many years? Yes, they had been well worn. However, I write to you just fine. Tail bone, skull, and the rest of my body doing well and in tact. It was a great trek.

Here we have a lovely picture of the church from the inside. In part I was kind of disappointed. All that walking and climbing steps for this? However, the more I thought about what it would have been like to have built this church, getting all the rocks up such a trek I only did once, and actually constructing this? Yes, it became rapidly more incredible.

And yes, as with every church I enter that has an organ, I will be taking a picture, and it will be on this website. No matter how seemingly insignificant of an instrument. So here we go, organ no. 1!


Another myth/rumor/legend about this Night of Templar concerns this star in the picture below. Hopefully you can see the little spec in the upper left hand corner. It's a star that is hung across the two mountains (well, French people call them hills, coming from the Midwest, they're mountains...). Across two mountains! One man strung this star out as he said he would when he returned/settled or something. I can't even imagine how this was done, but way to go!

After the long trek, we made it back down in time to get on the bus and head to the Gorge. I took a picture of this water well. It's much bigger than the little spout that was at St. Paul de Vence, but I'm sure this was their only source of water back in the day. It was also my source of water to rehydrate after the trek. I joked and said that if I got sick from this fountain, then I wanted pictorial proof of what it looked like and where it was. Thankfully I did not get sick, but it still makes a great picture and it was the first public water I drank in France. And I lived to tell about it!

From this lovely village we boarded the bus and made our way to the Gorges du Verdon. As you can already see from the picture below it was yet another gorgeous place. This is actually a man made lake. They put a damn further up stream and what transpired from that was a lake. No salt water, no real sea life, just crystal clear water, great sunshine, and boats moving along. We sat here and had lunch and then had a few hours to relax, burn, and swim the width of the lake. It was so relaxing, especially after an excruciating (well, that's a bit strong) hike up to the church.

While we were swimming and tanning, there were parasailers who were landing on the beach. It was fun to watch them. Even more exciting was when a helicopter landed on the beach. We were all convinced something must have gone horribly wrong. After all, with the winding roads it's doubtful an ambulence would have done much good. The helicopter landed, and the proceeded to leave and head towards the mountain that was right near by, then come back and landed again, and repeated the same procedure for a second time. In the end, we're not entirely sure what happened. We speculated that it was training for pilots learning how to land along the winding roads. Oh, how I do love France.

From there, we made our way back to the college. Here's a picture out the bus window. While it's hard to see, the connection between the Grand Canyon and here made much more sense than just the man made lake. It's a far reaching area of canyons and lakes. It was a beautiful day to look out over it. I was hopeful we would have stopped to take pictures, but alas, this is what we're left with.

We did however make a stop at this lovely bridge and otherwise scenic area.

Most notable about this bridge is that you can go bunge-jumping off the bridge! For the small fee of 150 euros. My question, or problem with that fee, is I would need someone to pay me at least that much to jump, and some people actually willing pay that and jump off a bridge. Do you see how much of a drop there is? Are you kidding me? Well, to each there own. We did get to see someone jump off, and you can see the person if you look at the tiny spec in the upper left hand corner of the picture. My stomach filped as I watched them, I wonder how they're doing after...

This was the other place we stopped which was just a little ways up the road from the bridge. Very senic, very impressive, and the marvels of the world continue to amaze me. These large, rock mountain things are so fascinating when you see them in person because it looks like someone just tore off a chunck of rock from it. There's not steady incline, just heavily jagged rock. Incredible. I don't understand how glaciers work but I sure can and do appreciate the asthetics of it all.

While most of us got out and enjoyed the view, there were those who were too exhausted from the beach to wake up and get off the bus. So, for a final end to this post here's a group picture in front of another incredible part of France.