Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Carcassonne Museum Day - 19th May

The photo above could be of anything: art, a heritage piece, a religious dedication, a cultural symbol or just some bizarre collection to entertain. What the displayer intended may not be what the viewer interprets, which leads to today’s Essence of France Photo Challenge No.12 Impressionist Artists; An impressionist artist does not try to paint a reflection of real life, but an 'impression' of what the person, light, atmosphere, object or landscape looked like to them. France has many great impressionist artists such as Monet, Gauguin and Cezanne; today we saw some examples of impressionism art produced by the local school children of the region; further explanation below.

The actual intention was to have a day in Carcassonne visiting 4 museums as suggested by the local Tourism Office.

1. The Museum of Fine Arts housed in the Chapelle des Dominicaines.
   - This was a small private collection on sale to the public
2. The Museum of Fine Arts housed in a former Presbytery.
   - This museum consisted of 10 gallery rooms displaying art from the 16th to 20th century. One room was dedicated to Neo-Impressionism which aims to give more luminosity to the painting by combining the science of colour and a special application technique being tiny adjacent dabs of primary colour. Impressionist artist use loose brush strokes, bright colours and outdoor scenes to create the luminosity.
   The school children of Carcassonne were challenged to create their impression of a subject. They were given a canvas with one common feature already on it and required to paint the rest of the scene. Some of them were very creative and you could clearly tell what the artist was thinking, unfortunately the gallery does not allow photos, so here’s one of the outside of the Museum.
3. Centre Culturel de la Mémoire Combattante (or in English Museum of Veterans)
   - The museum was supposed to be open today but wasn’t, no explanation, not even a sign like the unreliable sewing shop - she at least advised her customers that she was bridging the gap.
4. The Museum of Inquisition
   - The Museum has three parts but we opted out of the simulated horror experience. The other two parts of the museum are in different places of the fortified city. They consisted of displays and signage (in English) of all the torture treatments used for any Inquisition in France whether it be Spanish, Cathars, witches, spouses committing adultery, heresy or simply woman who talk too much. Most of the displays were eye watering; again, you weren’t allowed to take photos, but my finger slipped on the camera.

Cheese Experience No.28 - Cheese as a milk substitute; Because the French are pathetic at chilli we brought out own from home, which is great until Roger forgets he is cooking with NZ chilli and not French and over does it.
Normally I would drink milk to cool my mouth down, but decided cheese is milk so why not use the abundance of cheese we had in the fridge rather than the over processed milk that doesn’t need refrigeration. It worked a treat, I’m glad I went for the expensive stuff though and not the cheese infected with bread mould.