Labouiche

Last week while we were in the South, we took a day trip to Foix. I'll post more about that later, but for now, I wanted to post about a really cool natural site we visited called "La rivière souterraine de Labouiche", or the Underground River of Labouiche.

It's the longest navigable underground river in Europe, and has been open to the public since 1938 (thanks to the adventurous men who spent 30 years exploring and mapping it). The tour takes you through 1.5km of the river, which is located about 60m underground. Since it had just opened for the season, we were the only ones there and ended up getting a private tour. The guides don't have paddles at all - they use the two steel cables you see on the left in the picture above to pull the boats along. The trip lasts about 75 minutes, and they take you past all sorts of waterfalls and rock formations. Our guide was very informative and shared a lot of information about the history of the area, and the geology of the site.
My favorite part though was all of the illuminated stalactites and stalagmites. There's a French mnemonic device that says "Les stalactites tombent et les stalagmites montent". Since the verb Tomber (to fall) starts with a T and the verb Monter (to climb or get up on) starts with an M, it's an easy way for French children to remember which is which. I'm not sure where I learned it, but it's always stuck with me. Funnily enough, C had never heard it before! If you're ever in the area, it's worth a visit, especially on a hot day. The cost is 9.10€ for adults and 7.10€ for children. According to our guide though, the afternoon visits are usually packed, so they recommend arriving first thing in the morning in order to avoid the crowds.

As a sort of recompense for my toils last week, C & I decided to do a bit of sight-seeing on our way back to Paris.

Our first stop was at the biggest dolmen in Europe, found just outside of Saumur. It's hard to tell from the picture, but it's gigantic - over 23m (75ft) tall and 18m (60ft) long. And C, who's over 6 feet tall, was able to stand up inside of it no problem. Not bad for a 5,000 year old structure, eh?Then it was on to Troglodyte country - some of you may remember that I visited some troglodyte caves around this time last year. Well this time around, we found some that had literally been built into the side of a mountain. Wouldn't this be a crazy place to live?
In between stops, we would our way through many a tiny, deserted village:
Stopping along the way to taste & purchase several different wines - among them were Saumurs, Chinons, Bourgeuils, and a magnum of Crémant de Loire for Thanksgiving dinner. We'll just say that I did most of the tasting and C did most of the driving. And luckily the more I drank, the less I minded the slow driving - it made for easier picture-taking anyways. :)
And lastly, what's a visit to the Loire Valley without a stop at a Chateau? I've been to most of the big castles here over the years, so this time we stopped at the Chateau d'Ussé - which is supposedly the castle that inspired the writing of Sleeping Beauty. I don't know if that's true, but it sure was a neat place to visit:And then it was back to Paris and the horrible traffic jams caused by the "snow" that day. I ended up driving since we were running short on time to return the rental car, and man - it was one of the most stressful things I've ever done. But I did it, and we made it back just in the nick of time. It's funny though, because there are a lot of great destinations within an easy drive of Paris - but the Parisian traffic is so bad we never want to go. Our travel time last week was doubled (4 hours instead of 2 hours) just because of the traffic. So how people commute everyday in IdF, I will never know!

This week I was lucky enough to have to "forced" days off work. Well, not really off work since I still had to respond to emails & phone calls, but two days where I couldn't actually visit any clients. So I did what any girl with a free rental car & a love for discovering new things did - I went exploring.

First up on my list was visiting some of the Troglodyte cave dwellings. It's been something I wanted to do every since seeing it over on Amy's blog almost two years ago. It's quite ironic though to see the comment I left there, saying how I was going to try to get Fab to take me in Spring 2008...ie when we broke up. Either way, I'm glad I finally made it.

I saw a sign for a site with 2 Troglodyte farms located about 5kms from where I was staying, so after breakfast one day, I headed off to check it out. I had the whole place myself, and thus spent a few hours making checking things out and making my way through all the different rooms.

Here's what it looks like today:And in around 1900, just before the farms were abandoned:The caves really were like mini-towns underground. There was a room for everything - sleeping quarters, kitchens with bread ovens, stables for the animals, and even wine-pressing rooms.I also found it really neat that all the rest of the houses in the village also had their own troglodyte caves underneath. You could see that some people where using them for storage:And others had turned them into apartments or gîtes:If I'm ever in the area again, I'll definitely be checking one of them out - anything has to be better than the hotel where I stayed!