As part of the big celebration birthday trip for both Burt and Evelyn, who both turned 3/4 of a century old this year, we chose a big tour to include Morocco (our 105th country), Camargue, and Villanueva les Avignon, in Southern France. We celebrated Evelyn’s official birthday on May 19th with our friends from Hawaii, Alla and Michael Parsons, in Montpelier, France. Earlier in February, we took Burt to Las Vegas to see one of his favorite magicians, David Copperfield. We’ll be writing the blogs out of order, so stay tuned.
Musée Fabre is an exceptional museum located in the the hub of Montpelier, with an extensive collection including Delacroix, Rubens, Corbet and Raphael. It is considered one of the most important museums in Europe, due to its significant collection of European art spanning from the Renaissance period to current day. On the day we visited, several groups of school children were also there, so we dodged around them.
We joined Jim Cline’s photo tour France: Saintes-Maries gypsy Pilgrimage and Cowboys of Camargue to photograph the famous white horses of Camargue, led by Patrick Firouzian. A feature of this tour is about learning more about the culture and traditions. (Keep tuned for a LOT of images from that week!)
A portrait session was set up at lunch stop, where the locals dressed in traditional French clothing from historical Southern France, as seen above.
Camargue bullfighting, known as Course Camarguaise, is an unusual tradition, where there is no bloodshed and the bull’s are not harmed. The bullfighters goal is to remove the decorative attribute from the Camargue bull’s horns without harm over a 15-minute period for each bull, and taunts the bulls to chase them. The bull fighters have remarkable agility and constantly leaping out of the arena to evade the bull’s horns, as seen center-right.
It’s hard to imagine how many pink flamingos can be seen close up in the salty marshland of Camargue. Parc Ornithologique Pont de Gau, a 60 hectare site, is located in the heart of the Camargue Regional Natural Park and home to a plethora of bird species including pink flamingos, herons, hosting more than 200 bid species.
