There is a small river over which hangs a rock shelf. The shelf holds a pond with green mosses. All along the edge of the shelf, the pond spills into the river. It is at the bottom of a mountain. It was the one thing in France I've seen that looks like it was designed by the same gods who designed Japan. Amazing. Anyway, we got a picture of the parked cars, just not the shelf.
When we finished with that, we headed into the town. It is an old village--founded in 804 and many of the buildings are connected--sharing walls. In the case of one building in the town square, it is leaning and it buttressed up on the third floor to prevent it from falling more. The town is now a sort of artists' colony and there are shops selling typical tourist stuff along side the products of the artists living there.
The center of the town is an abbey founded by a cousin of Charlemagne who battled the Moors. The abbey has a Romanesque church with a crypt that is open (but doesn't really contain much) and the abbey grounds where the monks tried to be as self sufficient as possible.
We ate at the other end of town. When we were done eating, and they got around to giving us our deserts (I had chocolate and coffee ice cream, Elena had vanilla and coffee ice cream), we went on a little hike with one of the guys from our group. Here we are at the start.
The hike goes up past the "Castle of Giants" which is off on it's own rocky hill. Here I am with the Castle of Giants in the background and with the village in the background.
We'll get more pictures later because we're likely to do the hike again. It seems to be a popular place for Montpellierians as we bumped into Claudine who hosted the first house party we went to. We're already bumping into people we know out in other cities.
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