France

Flowers survive and thrive, by growing nice flowers that attract honeybees.

Dogs survive and thrive, by being cute and ensuring humans love having them around.

So, too, do ancient, decaying medieval cities survive and thrive, by re-inventing themselves to attract tourists.

Here’s the town map of a very remote medieval town, called Pérouges, It’s located a long way from civilization, and it’s high on a hill, and when you park you have quite a long way to walk when you reach it.

But as the up coming series of snaps show, you’ll be glad you did!

The last time I was here was more than two years ago. It’s a medieval village nestled deep within a national park in France, and in which the overwhelming majority of its residents are involved with the cutlery industry or knifemaking.

The village center has changed incredibly, and most of the stores and storefronts are vacant. Perhaps a result of the Corona virus on the economy?

That’s the Rhein River, just behind that line of trees. And Germany’s Black Forest, the hills just behind that.

Continuing the series, a wonderful fountain next to a pond in front of a mighty California Giant Sequoia tree,

Continuing the series, the Parc has a nice fountain:

Continuing the series . . . It’s amazing – I’ve lived in Europe for over 20 years, never really paying much attention to whether you can find the mighty Califormia Giant Sequoia trees here or not – but, once I spotted one, it seems I am spotting them all over the place!

Here is an example of a Giant Sequoia tree I spotted in the Parc du Champ de Mars in Colmar, in Eastern France:

There is a small plaque beneath this behemoth, which reads

Sequoia Sempervirens

provenance: California

Don du peuple americain

au peuple francais,

a l’occasion de bi-centairre de

la Declaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen et du

Bill of Rights of the United States

1789-1989

Colmar is an interesting city on the border between France and Germany. As you can see from this snap – and indeed, as you can see from just about anywhere in Colmar – there was significant damage from centuries of war that leaves ancient buildings standing next to new ones:

A sad memory for me, as this snap was taken hardly a stone’s throw away from where the notable television chef and author Anthony Bourdaine took his own life,

What has 19 protons and 20 electrons?  Don’t answer too fast – that’s a trick question!  Potassium atoms have at least that many, but so does every element in the Periodic Chart heavier than potassium!

But what has fabulous old, derelict potassium mines?  Alsace, as this snap shows!

Continuing the series, here he is, the only French King to be declared a Catholic saint, on display in a prominent square in the city: Saint Louis, IX or a statue in his honor at least. He’s the fellow that started not just one but two Crusades, where hoards of marauding Christians marched into Jerusalem, in an attempt to re-capture it from the Moors.

Continuing the series, here is another snap that – if you look carefully through the doorway – shows how truly enormous the walls are:

Note: normally I do no post-processing of my images except for a bit of cropping – but in this case I used a iPhone app called SLRWT to straighten up the curved sides a bit, which anyway is just an artifact of having a spherical lense.

Continuing the series, here is a snap that shows just how huge and imposing the walls of this medieval city are: