Gordes

Just a few kilometers on from the Fountaine was the bastide town of Gordes, another beautiful village, or, wait, no, a classe village (I think it's probably a matter of how many turbusses a village can handle...), which we visited on October 16th.

Tons of flat rock around, lending itself to the building of fences

And also of these corballed structures, similar to the Oratory
of Gallarus, in Ireland, but a thousand years younger; there is
an entire village of them, reconstructed; called bories;
residents of Gordes seem to have converted them to out-
buildings, garages...

Anyhow, after parking at the aire, we walked up the 2k to
the town and were rewarded with great views

Another borie

Gordes citadel

Nosing around

Awaiting the turbuss

Very talented miniaturist...

At the aire...we spent the night

Fountain Vaucluse: The Spring

Hiking the trail to the cliff's base and the spring...

Female hiker

Along the trail, more poetic tributes

The trail, the cliff

Looking up some hundreds of feet

The spring, down there in the cave, said to be more than 1,000
feet deep

Measuring flood stages (in the spring)

Low tide

Previous visitors

As it emerges (this time of year)

Driving away from the box canyon where all this occurs

Fountain Vaucluse: The Town

8k away form L'Isle Sur La Sorgue is the source of the Sorgue, a spring that is said to be the 3rd largest in the world. We expected to find a big spring with a creek running down the hill. Instead, the spring emerges from the base of a huge cliff...and the town at its base is at least as interesting as the spring...

In the little town, an 11th century church that is far more
interesting than most Romanesques

Because it incorporates not just the design of
the Romans but some re-cycled Roman columns
as well

And some other carved blocks that might well have been
Celtic

But not this one; our ancestors were not doing this sort of
thing in the 11th century!

In the town, restaurants, shoppes, and hotels all around; 1.5
million visitors annually, barely noticed in some of the guides

And what's this column?!

A tribute to the 14th century Italian humanist poet Petrarch, who
did some time here...

Founder of humanism, first modern mountain climber, and
many other things (he coined the term "Dark Ages")...I
remember reading his ascent of Mt. Ventoux when I was a
freshman in college...and understanding little...the "inward"
turn of humanism was his...

His house; now a museum

700th anniversary

Pretty town

Looking up high toward the cliff, caves

Ruins up high

Now back from seeing the spring: the wheels, which powered
seven giant paper mills along this river, centuries ago

One remains which has been made into a museum

And after the museum, a long gallery of shoppes