St. Bertrand de Comminges, France

View from the top of Château de Mauvezin

My knight in shining armor

Château de Mauvezin

Les Pyrennes

another view from the top

Un chat français

Le cloître de St. Bertrand de Comminges

Autumn leaves

Natalie & I in St. Bertrand de Comminges

Lft to rt: me, Evelyn, Laura.

Last weekend we went on a USAC excursion to St. Bertrand de Comminges. There, we visited the Chateau and the Roman Ruins. Originally, St. Bertrand de Comminges was a popular rest-spot before crossing the Pyrenees and continuing into Spain. There’s lots of snow on the Pyrenees now so I definitely got some great pictures.

Afterwards we had lunch at a small, family run restaurant in the town. Our abroad program organizes the lunches for our excursions so everything is pre-selected. They are always good so it is never a problem ….until now. Our first course was a vegetable & potato soup, which was amazing since it was freezing out. Then we had some sort of meat dish. It was really chewy, almost raw in areas, and none of us could figure out exactly what it was. After eating half of it, and leaving the raw looking bits aside, we thought of asking the waiter what it was but decided that it would be rude. My friend Jimmy suggested that it might be rabbit! We all looked at each other and cringed, but there was nothing that we could do at that point. Well, my mom always tells me to try new things…haha. It actually tasted good, but maybe because I was starving from all of our site-seeing. We had La mousse au chocolat for dessert and ça est toujours délicieuse !!

After that we saw the caves of Gangas. There are really famous pre-historic cave paintings inside. It was cool so see because we have studied about these specific paintings in art history. We were in a cave for a half an hour on the tour. It was kind of creepy with cave water dripping everywhere and only faint lighting to mark our path. It really was amazing how the paintings and carvings are still there, dating from Paleolithic times. Afterwards we went to Chateau de Mauvezin. This was a fortress with all sorts of war replicas inside. There was also definitely the best view of the Pyrenees that I have seen!