Lagrasse

A really early blip today! Despite the change in hour, I was up by 8 o'clock. It's another glorious day; inspired by yesterday's blipmeet, I went a bit further afield than usual, making my own personal bliptrip to Lagrasse, un des plus beaux villages de France. We sometimes take visitors here, but other than that we don't go there much, even though it's only a 10-minute drive from home.

I took quite a few photos, but couldn't help choosing the most clichéd one for my blip. Well, if you haven't seen it before, it's not a cliché, is it? In the summer there's almost always a car parked at this spot, with someone snapping away at the view. You can see both bridges -- the medieval one and the "new" one -- and the Abbaye de Sainte Marie de l'Orbieu.

Half of the abbey belongs to the Mairie, and the other half to a community of monks who bought it from its private owner some years ago. The Mairie and the Consil Général were so peeved by this that they tried to expropriate them on the grounds that they were a "sect". It didn't work, and the white-robed monks seem pleasant enough, making no apparent attempt to indoctrinate the population.

Lagrasse is very lively in summer, but a bit dead in winter because there are so many second homes. We looked at a couple of houses in Lagrasse when we were househunting, but I'm glad we didn't buy one. Beautiful as Lagrasse is, it's not very authentique! However, it's a lovely place to stroll on a warm day -- lots of cafés, restaurants, art galleries, and potteries, plus the Maison du Terroir where you can buy the best of local produce. On this lovely spring morning the café terraces were almost empty -- a contrast to Toulouse yesterday.

I've posted some more photos on Flickr. Have a great day, blipmates!