Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Maison Basse, Fontaine de Vaucluse, and Pont Julien

In Treasures of Provence last week we went to visit Maison Basse, a very old French farmhouse that SCAD now owns and is renovating and I think they said they are going to turn it into a studio space or something like that. Which, I do not envy the students that would have to use that as their class space, the hike to place is fine, it's going back up the very steep hillside that sucks. I was dying after the walk back to the dorms that day.


I'm hoping to use the Maison Basse as one of my reference pieces for my final paper in Treasures class. I want to write a comparison of the accuracy of Beauty and the Beast (the Disney version, because it is my favorite) to actual provencial architecture and clothing. And carry that on to show how the accuracy of a film effects the believability of its storytelling. Hopefully I can find enough info on it to write 7-9 pages about it.




Here's a view of Lacoste from the Maison Basse, as you can see we really didn't go that far from the town. At one point someone had built a balcony attatched to the farmhouse so that they could look up at the chateau. Which we learned is a big 'no no'. Something about how you aren't supposed to look up at the castles because it was disrespectful or something like that. I imagine that the Marquise de Sade probably would have gotten off on the attention in some way...I mean come on, it's not as if he was a modest person to begin with (nor could you really see much other than the stone work of the chateau.)



I'm not sure if you can see it all that well but there are roman numerals on the wall where supposedly an ancient clock used to be. I'd believe it since parts of the farm house dates back to the Roman Empire (I think that's what our guide said anyway.)









On Tuesday, last week I became a stow-a-way on the Travel Portfolio classes bus, as I will be for every trip they take and the space is available, to go to a little village called Fontaine de Vaucluse. There were two main reasons that they were going to this particular village. 1) there is a spring that feeds the river that runs through the town that no one has found the bottom to yet (man or unmanned) and 2) because of the paper mill there. And no I don't mean like the smelly paper mill in Savannah, I mean one that actually produces the paper we as artists use.


This is part of the mill, unfortunately they weren't actually making any paper that day, but I believe we are supposed to go back to the town later this quarter and hopefully we will get to see the machines in action at that time. Over all though, even with nothing really happening it was just cool to be able to go in there and look around. The gift shop there was small but really cool because of all the different maps, cards, single sheets or even sketchbooks full of the paper they made there. I didn't buy anything this time, but I might next time.


Here is the spring that I was talking about. What you are looking at is the sources of the river. It really made me miss home because there are some beaches where the water is close to that color, though much much warmer than the spring is. It was really awesome to see the source so calm and beautiful and then suddenly there was a raging river pouring out of it. In fact the rapids are good enough for kayakers to train there (which we saw two guys doing just that.) I think they may even have smaller competitions held there, but I'm not sure.



Finally I took this as we were leaving the village. I really don't know much about the bridge other than it was really big and amazingly cool to see. I imagine it's Roman, since there are aqueducts and bridges all over Provence built by he Romans.






This is a short video I took of the source and the river it feeds.





Speaking of Bridges, on the way to and from Apt we pass this 3000 year old bridge called Pont Julien. This one I know for a fact is Roman built, and up until 10 or 20 years ago, they still let cars drive across it. They don't do that anymore, but you can still walk across it or bike across it (which I did).

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