I’m being dreadfully slack with this travel blog: I went to Limoges a good couple of weeks ago.

Limoges is a good four hours west of Paris. I decided on Limoges to spend Halloween, as opposed to several other places which had halloween festivals, because of reports like this:

Halloween in Limoges, where this village attracts 30,000 to 50,000 people to its October 31 annual street shows, story telling and events organised by associations, town centre merchants, and the city of Limoges. For more information, call 033 05 55 34 46 87 or send e-mail to info@tourismelimoges.com.

From: http://gofrance.about.com/cs/festivals/a/halloween.htm

and:

In 1996 the Halloween festival was formally introduced into the Limoges calendar. The festival is marked by an annual street parade and story-telling events. It is extremely popular and typically attracts somewhere in the region of thirty to fifty thousand spectators. The street parade takes place in the centre of town; however, the route is altered every year. The parade is fancy dress but spectators are unlikely to see any cartoon characters or superheroes running around. Instead the costumes are far more traditional and the parade is simply made up of ghosts, ghouls and goblins wielding candle-lit carved out pumpkins.

From: http://www.limoges.co.uk/halloween.html

You can’t beat 30,000 spectators and street shows, even if I’d never heard of Limoges before. So, last minute and armed with a credit card, I booked (ridiculously expensive) train tickets, planning to spend a couple of days before hand wandering around the sweet old town. I had to go through Paris anyway, so I decided to spend a few days there, either side, also.

Well, when I reached Limoges, I saw very little to do with Halloween. The 30,000 spectators and street shows are a thing of the past: the festival has fizzled out in the past five years. Unfortunately, the first cold snap of the year just happened to coincide with the Toussaint holidays, so I was miles away from my warm Lille bedroom, with only a small backpack of gear, wet shoes, and no Halloween party.

However, my trip to Limoges was saved by two things: one, a marvellous couch host named Rachel who, taking pity on my poverty, fed me and gave me a pair of socks (stupidly, I wore both pairs I had brought on the one day I happened to want to go to Oradour, and it happened to rain buckets.) Thumbs up to Rachel:

The second thing was Limoges itself: it is a lovely – though small – city, and well recommended as a decent weekend location for Brits in cars, or a stopover for backpackers on their way to Toulouse. Highlights include looking at some of the most marvellous porcelain, the gorgeous old town, and nearby WWII memoiral site Oradour-sur-Glane.

Limoges: Old Town and Train Station

Many medieval towns in France, and Belgium, have ‘vieilles villes’ – old towns – where original buildings have surivived. Lille is a good example of this sort of town, as is pretty much all major Flemish cities in Belgium (Antwerp, Ghent, Brugges …). Limoges has the cutest I’ve seen so far. Centred around the St. Etienne Cathedral, there are cobblestones galore, tiny winding streets, wood and plaster buildings leaning dramatically, a botanical garden with medicinal plants, spectacular views across the river from medieval pedestrian bridges and plenty of that vintage charm which vieille villes are known for. When the sun shone, this was a marvellous place.

The commercial heart of the city also contains several beautiful old buildings – such as the Place de la Motte, which contains les Halles, a covered marketplace where I bought a swiss pasty.

When I leave France I am going to miss the patisseries and boulangers – bakers – which are deliciously naughty. Who knew pain de chocolat – which is basically a croissant with chocolate in it – would be so goddamned good?! Bugger pies and pasties, lets have more of these tart things:

The Eglise de St. Michel des Lions is good for some ancient perspective: it’s over 600 years old, and is garded by two stone lions from the Gallo-Roman era. Actually, it was a little different from most French churches I’ve seen so far, as it had an open, wide, design that created much more a hall than a long tall tunnel. It apparently holds relics of the patron saints of Limoges, Saint Martial, Sainte Valerie and Saint Loup. It’s primary features are these gold reliquaries and the engraved tomb at the altar.

One of the more impressive buildings is the Hotel de Ville – I did go on a tour of the inside, but honestly it wasn’t worth it. The building is more recent and less lavishly decorated than other government buildings in other parts of the country. It is spectacular from the outside, however.

I found the art noveau and deco decorations in the Hotel de Ville far more interesting than the baroque. Most are more recent – of course – and are created by local artisans.

I really did like the fountain out the front though – it had been designed by local artists and represented the porcelain heritage of the town:

The main Limoges station, built on the ruins of a Benedictine monastery, is beautiful. It lists amongst the most beautiful train stations in Western Europe – so far, for me, it is second only to Antwerp’s Centraal station. It’s lovely art noveau, baroque and classical style.

Just quickly, one quirky Limoges thing which I have since seen elsewhere: it is impossible to find free public toilets in France, unless you’re a doggie:

Not for doggie number twos, but for doggie number ones. They don’t bother cleaning up the number twos. Dog pee poles. Its very kind of the local government to provide communal poles for dogs to pee on. I don’t think they quite understand dogs, if they intend this to be a preventative measure. Any of our dogs will pee on any pole they can possibly find, regardless.

Meanwhile, the human toilet near St Etiennes, which you have to pay 30c to use, wanted to torture me by opening the door while I was halfway through my own business. I seriously hate these automated toilets; they are feral beyond belief. Meg and Dani, the anal American and Canadian I lived with in Japan would be proud they’ve influenced me enough that I’m grossed out by disgusting toilets. At least the ones in Limoges weren’t anywhere as bad as the ones in Paris.

One more Limoges site: this door. I’ve seen doors like this in random other places, thinking maybe in Amsterdam – very cool I wonder who they are.

Halloween

The one Halloweenee thing I did do was go on a tour of the subterraen under St. Etienne cathedral with a hunchback witch and several kids in costume. Okay, totally kid thing to do, but I love any tourist site under ground (next time I’m in Paris, I will go on the catacomb tour). It was a little bit of fun, totally in French, but underneath the St. Etienne cathedral is really interesting.

Rachel and I went out to the local Irish pub, which had Aussie signs in the window. There are Irish pubs everywhere, and god, they’re all the same. Are Irish pubs in Ireland the same as those in France and Australia? There must be a ‘Molly’s’ in every city on earth.

This one was called ‘Pub Irlandais’ – which is ‘Irish Pub’ in French. Duh.

Porcelain in Limoges

So, Limoges is the centre of Porcelain in France. Boring, hey? Well, actually, it was rather fascinating: I knew nothing about porcelain before, but do now – I appreciate the work that goes into those plates and little figurines, despite their banal and old fashioned nature. Want to see exquisite dinner plates which cost hundreds of dollars per piece? Go to Limoges.

So, the main centre for porcelain is the Adrien Dubouche Museum, the building of which is worth the trip, in all of its art deco / noveau glory. It’s beautiful.

There was an exhibition by porcelain artist Jean Boggio at the museum, which held some seriously gorgeous things:

The rest of the museum held plenty of examples of very ordinary looking old fashioned porcelain, but most interesting was the older porcelain, and the more artistic, complex styles. I came to have a lot of respect for the artisans who worked with such a fragile medium.

I fell in love with these lights when I first saw them. The porcelain they’re made of is particularly fine, and therefore is translucent enough that they can be used as lights or candle holders. Later, after wandering around Limoges I found these bubble patterned ones were from a company called Reynaud, and the picture shaped ones (below) are from Bernardaud.

In the information centre, I saw some of the porcelain jewellery made by Bernardaud. It was exquisite, and though I knew it would probably be ridiculously expensive, I made an effort to go out and see the Bernardaud shops.

They were so gorgeous. The rings I saw were amazing – made from fine porcelain, and painted and embossed in gold in the most fantastic designs. This is probably the first time I’ve seen something designer that   I   R E A L L Y    R E A L L Y   W A N T E D! Of course, you know I didn’t buy anything – the earrings and necklace above is about 150euros from memory ($300); the rings were 50euros, the pendants I almost bought were 45euro. I couldn’t bring myself to pay $90 Australian for a pendant, but otherwise I so could’ve bought one.

Instead, I paid 30euro ($60) for a porcelain lamp, with a picture of Mont St. Michel.

Yes, expensive: but I really really loved these lamps when I saw them, and I really wanted a souvenir of my time there that was uniquely French, and uniquely Limoges. Mont St. Michel is an abbey on an island which I visited in 2005:

I was tempted to get the one of Japan (!) because it was the most beautiful, but thought it wouldn’t be a particularly French souvenir if I did.

Bernardaud is a big brand name in porcelain. The factory shop is great if you’re looking for bargain porcelain sets – lots of white porcelain …

If you think 30 euros is too much for a piece, consider these plates:

You can’t see the price tags, so you’ll have to take my word that they are 180euros each. Thats for one plate. Not the whole set. Mind, that is real gold embossed on them. Really, who would? Who has ‘nice plates’ anymore? Hell, if I owned a set of these, they’d be kept in a safety deposit box.

Limoges is a bit of a hothouse of arts. Besides porcelain, its a centre for enamel and lead-light windows. I would’ve liked to see more modern applications of those arts, though. The potential for porcelain and enamel in modern arts is staggering, as I saw in Boggio’s work. I wish there were more.

WWII Resistance

Limoges was a centre of French resistance during WWII, and besides St. Etienne’s cathedral, I found the tiny Musee de la Resistance. It one of those organic museums of heartfelt collections of random stuff assembled by the family members of those involved, manually typed labels, cut and paste displays and volunteer docents. I’ve always liked these kind of museums, my favourite being Checkpoint Charlie Hause in Berlin. This one was also free (hence suiting my poverty).

I’d been to Oradour-sur-Glane the previous day, so I’d come to be interested in Limousin involvement in WWII – this was an area under occupation, sheltering refugees from other massacres in Spain and, of course, Jews. I will write about Oradour-sur-Glane in a seperate entry, do check back for that – it is the site of the biggest Nazi massacre in Europe.

But, these are pics of the itty bitty Musee de la Resistance:

Return soon with Oradour-sur-Glane and more Paris.