Sunday started off with a mass at the fine old church in the nearby village of Boege. My childen were all delighted, marvelling at the brevity of the service (Only one hour! Imagine that!) and the comfort of the church (no heat, no dust). The twins were particularly pleased that we had the pew just in front of the statue of Joan of Arc and right across from an even more fascinating statue of a very fierce, armor-wearing angel in the act of gruesomely dispatching a hideous demon.

Writing about the church reminds me that I never posted much about our visit to the monastery last weekend. And of course there is the goat village, which certainly merits a more detailed account.

So, here's the ruins of the Cistercian monastery up in the mountains. It stood for about 600 years, until the local villagers tore it down in the 18th century and used the stone to build their village church.

Not many local history buffs in the village at the time, I guess.

After the underwhelming medieval fair near the ruins, we headed over to Les Londaret (aka The Goat Village). As you can kind of see, it's a cute village. But it's real claim to (relative) fame is the herd of 40 or so goats that roam free in it.

So, there we all were: 40 goats and 400 tourists.

That works out to 10 tourists PSG. ( PSG = Per Square Goat. They are square because the tourists stuff them full of goat treats all day long.)

But Mallory felt that the goats were not getting all the affection that they should. While the tourists happily bought endless bags of alfalfa treats to stuff the goat denizens of Les Lindarets, they seemed to have little real feeling for the animals. In other words: Where was the love?
So it was that Mallory passed through Les Lindarets like some small blonde goat goddess, dispensing affectionate pats and hugs, as well as comments as to the fine personality, strength, sweetness and/or general all-around loveliness of each individual goat. And she took care not to miss even one.

The one below got special attention, as he had an injured leg.
Just as we left, Mal ran into a shop and spent another of her Euros on a final bag of goat treats. "These are for Aslan. " she explained, rubbing the bag energetically with her hands.

"Umm..ok. Good idea. But what are you doing with the sack?"

"Well, I'm going to send this to Letty in Ouaga so she can feed it to him, but I want him to know it's from me. So if I can make it smell like me, he'll know who it's from! Do you think he misses me? I sure miss him."

Yes, I definitely think that he does.

France has a lot of history. It's positively jammed with it. Which sort of makes it funny that they would bother having Renaissance fairs and the like. The whole country is sort of like one big historical exhibit, isn't it?
But when I heard there would be a medival fair not too far from our house last Sunday, I immediately made plans to go and take the kids. It was to be held in the ruins of an 11th century Cistercian monastery.

Yesterday morning, I organised a picnic and we headed off, full of high hopes. I am a great fan of ren faires and have many happy memories of singing madrigals at the Kansas City faire over the years. So, I was really looking forward to this event near the village of Saint Jean d'Aulps.

Sadly, it wasn't all that great. Underwhelming is the word. The setting was amazing, as you can see in the photo, but there just wasn't all that much going on.

There were barely a dozen stands selling things. Besides that, there were four fat ponies, two goats , two chickens and a ferret. Saying that the entertainment was thin is being generous.

So, after we had our picnic, we headed farther into the mountains to the tiny village of Les Lindarets. It is a classic tourist destination and is often just called "the Goat Village" because it has lots of , well, goats wandering around in it. And I'm sure you all want to know everything about it, as it is well-known that this is a very goat-oriented blog. The goat races and goat weddings back in Africa made for some of my most popular posts. So, I'll certainly spare no effort tomorrow recounting our amazing adventures at the Goat Village of the French Alps.