Tourin' Around Tournon

Another gorgeous little town... blah blah blah

This one had a fantastic view of the sloped vineyards across the Rhône and if you look carefully at the top of the hill there is what looks like a little chapel that was built by a chap who came home from a war and wanted to be by himself, so he built a house right at the top of the hill.  Why not?

 This was also the winery that produced Jenny's favourite wine onboard.  

The Chapoutier Luberon.  

The weather has started to really heat up as we hurtle towards the Mediterranean so it was long pants back in the case and shorts and t-shirts out. Now, it's very hard not to look like a complete tourist when you've got shorts, ankle socks and walking shoes on..... being part of a big tour group with headsets on doesn't help either.  When Jenny got dressed this morning, she said, "For goodness sake, what do I look like?  Don't take any photos of me today."  

Oops!

Our tour guide showed us around the old part of Tournon which was very interesting.  It is a very small town with the River Rhône on one side and vineyard covered hills right behind it.  The town is really only about 3 streets deep.

It used to be a fortified town back in the day with many lockable entrances.  The archways are still there today, but they keep them unlocked.  They're not so concerned with being invaded anymore.

Today was a Sunday and so, like all of France, everything is closed, unless you want to pay massive taxes to open.  The only things that were open were eating establishments - that opened at lunch time, a butcher and a place where you buy your lotto tickets (and fridge magnets).

The tour guide took us into the lovely secondary school to have a look at the garden and to tell us all about the French school system.  They only go to school 4.5 days a week.  They have Wednesday afternoons off and sometimes, depending on the government, they don't go on Wednesdays at all!  They used to have longer school days though, until they changed it to finishing at 3.30pm but all kids had to do an activity until 4.30pm at the expense and responsibility of the parents.  This system didn't work so well as working parents didn't have the flexibility to facilitate this mandatory activity.... so it seems that Education Departments everywhere have a bit of a trial and error system going.  Maybe one day someone will work it out and spread the word.

It's not really the outdoor playground we're used to, however there were some very nice shady trees to sit under and some very pretty flowers to look at.

As we were walking through the town a young lad dressed in Roman garb skipped up to us and handed our guide a little card with details of an exhibition there was on showing how life in Tournon would have been like in during Roman occupation.  She vaguely asked the group if we would like to go.  We said nothing, thinking nobody would be interested and we'd be on our way, but somebody in the group must have nodded, as the guide said, "ok, we'll go and have a look, apparently there is lots of activities for us there."

Not knowing what to expect, we turned the corner to Caeser greeting us at the entrance to a small garden/carpark and what looked like a school hall.  There were a spattering of young kids - say about 12 years old all in varying forms of Roman dress.  There were 3- 4 tables set up, one with a couple of games of chess, one with popstick models of Roman inventions and one with Roman eats for us to taste.  There was a movable pin-up board with Information about the Romans...... it was really like a project I'd done on the Romans in grade 7 and non unlike projects I had asked my students to produce.  

We, a group of Australian and British tourists, were wandering around a school exhibition of their Roman Studies projects.

We were all looking at each other wondering what the hell we were doing there, but felt that we couldn't just walk off now we were there, so we had a look.  One young lad talked eloquently - in French obviously about the popstick models and how they worked.  

After he'd finished I told him, in my best French, that he spoke very well and that I liked the models (it was the teacher in me coming out)

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We took a photo of me behind this..... and then we waited for the guide and the rest of the group up on the street.  What you can see in the background was pretty much it!  

And it was on a Sunday when there was nobody else but us around.  So either their parents and families were coming or they were relying on very limited passers by!

The streets and buildings were very sweet and still had a real medieval feel.

This little deadened lane way wasn't actually part of the tour, but one of our party asked about as we passed and she took us in there.  It used to be a place where they would lock all the people who had the plague, sort of a quarantine area in the town.

This tower was at the top of hill behind the town and was where they once used to keep prisoners.  I'm not sure how long that lasted, but the tower was used as a scare tactic for children of the town.  They were told if they ever did the wrong thing, they would be going to that tower - A visual threat is always a winner!

After our tour we had our customary coffee and chocolate eclair before walking around the back street (note: I didn't make this plural 'streets', because there literally is only one back street before you hit the hill!)

There was a little VW (my most favourite car ever) parked there and somebody had put a flower under the windscreen wiper..... then I noticed on the left, someone had also left a box of Tictacs under the the other wiper!  

What a caring town.

This is the sort of town that doesn't need a McDonalds, but I've been told that French kids just lerve Maccas.  Perhaps they haven't seen Jamie Oliver's war against fast food shows or something.  After walking through this lovely, old, preserved town, I was a little dismayed to see this sign.

 Anyway...... we're heading back to the boat because today is BBQ day and they're cooking up a storm on the sun deck - in the 35 degrees.... in the blazing sun..... with limited umbrellas......

Nobody BBQ's like us Aussies - is that racist?