The most awesome thing we did today was go to the Carrieres des Lumieres. It's an old limestone quarry, that closed in 1935 and was repurposed by Jean Cocteau who filmed The Testament of Orpheus there. Then in 1977 Joseph Svoboda had another artistic vision for the place, and created a light and sound show on the walls of the quarry. The setting of the quarry itself is beautiful, you are on the top of a large hill, where the rocks are jagged and the landscape rolling. The quarry itself is massive although you can't quite tell until you are inside. As you walk into it the ceilings shoot up almost endlessly, the face of all the walls are flat and smooth and it's this big open maze that you stroll thru that feels like a huge space which respective areas, but not closed off. It's massive, and then the show itself is ingenious. They've projected images of Van Gogh's artwork on the walls, but it isn't stagnant...the art moves, and grows. If there is water in the scene, then the water almost appears to ripple. The pictures sort of rotate and move horizontally and vertically, so everywhere you look is something new. It's almost dizzying, like any more movement and you'd feel sea sick, but it falls just shy of that. Then in the background is music. Classical, instrumental, and at times even some rendition of a more modern song that was captivating and it fills the entire space. After the Van Gogh there was a series called "Deamed of Japan" which was beautiful, faster moving array of Japanese art starting with black and white cherry blossom trees with floating blossoms, and concluding with the night sky and floating lanterns. At first a random few lanterns floated up, and then eventually the wall/ sky/ space was filled with them. Absolutely amazing.
All I can say is I was awe struck by it. It's just such an incredibly beautiful idea, it's as if you are immersed in the painting. It's even on the floors. The show itself is maybe 40 minutes, and you have to buy tickets for different times. I had purchased them a few months ago and so we had our tickets ready, which was good because the line was super long. As it turns out we were running late this morning (shocker) and the entire time I had it in my head the show started at 10:00 a.m., but in fact it was 10:30, which we realized once we got into the line of all the people who had tickets already, and looked down at our actual printed tickets. It was perfect because we got there at 10:25, waited in line 5 minutes and then was swept in for the 10:30 showing.
The biggest bummer was that we only had the little kids with us. The older kids were so tired that they couldn't get out of bed, or more likely, they were too tired to get out of bed for "art" vs. say, renting jet skis or something of that nature. Hanya is still with us and the girls were up late last night talking and goofing around. We had an hour long drive this morning so we had to leave fairly early and in the end they did NOT rally and we had no choice but to leave. Super sad for them though, it was one of the coolest art installations I've ever seen.
Even though we had two kids with us, we also had two kids that didn't WANT to be with us. They thought the show was cool, but Gia wasn't feeling well and I think 90% of it was just fatigue. It's really hard to get them enough sleep here. They go to bed probably 10:30 p.m. on a good night, but they can't seem to sleep past 7 a.m., and last night they woke up several times because the older girls were loud. It gets hard when they don't get time to catch up on their sleep, they become a lot less flexible.
We drove to Avignon which is an absolutely beautiful city encircled by this amazing ancient fortress wall. We walked for all of 20 minutes, with the intent of finding lunch and hanging out, but Gia felt crappy, Romeo was whining, and it was hot. So we gave up and drove the hour home (both kids instantly crashed and were sleeping the whole way back.) We got home, let them eat, play in the pool for awhile (which is all Romeo really wants to do, we could be at a motel 6 in the middle of nowhere and he'd be fine if there was a pool and internet.)
Later John and I drove into Aix to walk around a bit solo. Aix is the city that Ava has called home for the past 6 months, and it's absolutely darling. We spotted this dog sculptor in the main square, and he was creating the most elaborate dog and pup out of sand I've ever seen, super impressive (Ava said he's always there and she always gives him money because he's AMAZING.) John and I hung out for a bit in Aix, walked around slowly, but truthfully we were both really tired too, so it was a slow cruise and then home to make the kids dinner. John had a late night phone conference to prep for, he was scheduled 11:00 p.m.-2:00 a.m. for the conference, which of course, is a perfectly civilized 2-5 pm. back home. Good thing he's a night owl.
Signed, ME. {lv}
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