Easter Weekend, Day 5

Today started out with an early start to get out of Andorra before the crowds of departing vacationers hit the road. First stop was Montsegur, another castle on the top of a rock. It came strongly recommended by french colleagues This time, the walk up was considerably more daunting.

After a long muddy climb, I reached the top to find out there wasn't much there. According to the history, a number of people were burned at the stake when the castle was defeated. I think there may be a few more people burning at the stake...

Next stop from there was the museum for prehistoric art. One of the things the region is famous for is the cave paintings left by ancient man thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, these caves are now largely closed to the public or have admission by reservation only. So, I did the next best thing and went to the museum down the road from the caves. They had long explanations about people living in the caves and their art. There were also full scale reproductions of the cave art. One thing I did learn was that the paintings seen on public tours of the caves are no longer visible. They have either all be destroyed by overvisitation or have been recreated. So, no big loss in missing the caves.

The final stop was the grotte du mas d'azil. A cave so big you could put a road through it, and somebody did.

There is a tour that goes through some of the cave, but i recommend skipping it. The guide would walk a while, stop, tell us to look around for 5 min, talk for 15 min (about spears or old bones), ask questions, then give 5 more minutes to look around before starting the whole cycle over again. It was so boring that I actually waited until no one was looking and then ran away back to the entrance.

The final notable thing from the trip was that I spotted 2 A380s at the airport in Toulouse.