Applied Studies - What I learned on my summer vacation in France

This is just a typical bridge, atypical because my wife Carol is riding across it, but typical in it’s construction. It was over a “nothing” creek, not unlike Kinney run during a high flow, but had a lot of capacity for large storm events. What I liked about this and many other bridge was the craftsmanship but also the durability. This one didn’t need any tuckpointing (where mortar falls out), but neither did it have a metal conduit to fail after decades of use. It was just solid, built to last, and it has done so.

This house was interesting because it was now owned by the local tourist/visitor center and was threatened to be torn down in the 1970s. It was built around 1000 AD or so from what I could tell of the French plaque. It’s preservation was in doubt until citizens rallied to save it. There were plenty of older homes, hundreds of years old, but this one was uniquely old. Obviously the parallels to the Astor house came to mind.

Here was a fixer-upper not too far from a highway, but really just at the edge of a thriving town. I joked with Carol about buying it and fixing it up, but it’s location was not ideal, not walkable (though on a bus route) and it took a full day of travel just to get to this remote town south of Toulouse. With population rates such as they are in Europe (and France’s is above replacement level, uniquely for Europe), we still saw a lot of abandoned homes. Someone made mention of the fact that high taxes discourage some homes from being fixed up. A decrepit home has lower taxes, so there is a disincentive from fixing things up. Where have I heard that before?

Albi was a compact town of 40K people or so. I think this is the cathedral where the pope laid the cornerstone in 1026 when on his way to the crusades in Jerusalem. But frankly I saw so many cathedrals it was hard to keep track. In any case…it was, and is, the world’s largest brick building. Most of the building took place over 200 years from the 1,400s onwards. We toured up to the second level inside (which means three levels in the US as ground level is zero in Europe), and even up there the walls were 5 feet thick or so. It was a massive structure with supposedly 19M bricks. The inside is spectacular. I got in trouble for pulling up You Tube while in the cathedral to play a concert from the organ, while looking at the organ itself. In some ways the docent was amused more than annoyed.

Looking at the Carcassone castle and city walls from the “new bridge”. The new bridge was built around 1600 or so, so it was not that new. I just loved the fact that this was still called the new bridge. It was now just for foot traffic I think, but was a substantial bridge across a small river. The town was split after some people battled the King and he didn’t want the survivors living nearby, so he forced the building of a new town across the river, which ultimate thrived. It reminded me of the North Golden/South Golden divide that used to exist (blue coller/monied elite) at the turn of the 20th century. This town too had it’s divide and was not resolved until the 1900s, after hundreds of years of separation.

What I ultimately learned on my vacation?

You won’t have history to look at unless you preserve it
Weather and time tear things down, so preservation takes effort
A walkable city can be awesome, but a poorly built one can be a nightmare for disabled, or those in wheelchairs
Mixed use as a “go to” way of building is awesome and allows for towns to be compact
With sufficiently good rail and bus service, you can live without a car for a while
Outdoor smoking is still quite alive and well in some places
My wife Carol is the best and I am so lucky to have her in my life (I knew this but was reminded of it ALL the time just being in her presence).