What a week!

May 24, 2019, On the way to Marseillan on the Mediterranean--This has been a week of great eating, great wines (most of them), great company and great visits to olive oil makers, towns, and mountain heights, with a few Roman ruins thrown into the mix of medieval and renaissance architecture.

Via Domitia

Narbonne Cathedral

The towns.  On Wednesday we visited Narbonne, a major town of the medieval times, with a cathedral that was only a choir because the nave was never completed.  Behind the high altar, just in the last century, when the Madonna was being sent to Paris for a show, the restorers found paintings and carvings showing the path to heaven and to hell.   This included the stepping stones down into the realm of the devil, but also the ice bath and heating oven (like a sauna) to drive out sins in purgatory before entering heaven.   The Roman ruin of the Via Domitia was incredible...and while we think of Roman roads as being rather uneven, we learned that the stone base was covered with gravel and then sand, and sometimes topped with ash to make a level running surface for legions and wagons.   

Behind the altar at Narbonne

Horsemeat for Lunch

Narbonne has a huge central market where we lunched on horsemeat, a marvelous sweetish meat, seldom found either here or in the US!  The restaurant, where we sat on high barstools, is famous because the meat comes from butchers across the aisle and the chef orders the meat through a megaphone from them just before cooking.   The meat packages are thrown over the customers' heads for the griller.   Lots of fun.

Dinner was an excellent cut of skate wing, served with varied vegetables.  We had a red to go with the appetizer, shaved duck breast on salad, and then a white for the fish main course.  

Ghetto at Penzenac, not much left

Yesterday we spent the morning exploring Penzenac, a smaller town, near Béziers, famous because they have taken Molière as their patron.  He spent a mere three summers there, but everything possible refers to him and the local theater groups produce his plays.  We walked the streets of the Jewish ghetto from the medieval days but there is virtually no evidence of their existence except street names and one Star of David installed by a new 21st century owner impressed by the history of his house.

Les Neuf Écluses

Yesterday, too, we passed through Les Neuf Écluses Fonseranes, a series of locks that took us down several hundred meters in the space of half an hour.   They date from when the canal was build during the days of Louis XIV.   

The new Star of David

Last night we dined on a velouté of asparagus, roast filet of lamb, two excellent dessert wines, a Maury and a port-like sweet wine both accompanying the chocolate and caramel mousse.  The red wine, a Corbières, received varied reactions... some of us loved it, others were not impressed.  The white was a local sauvignon blanc, and quite nice and balanced.

Massive medieval drainage system

The canal takes a bridge over the Aude River