Little town... it's a quiet village!

Bonsoir! I just got back from the marvelous little village of Vaison la Romaine. It's history dates back to 125 BC and the Roman invasion of Gaulois property. A castle way up on the hillside overlooks the village below. Today that village is inhabited by wealthy vactioners, but while it is freshly renovated (with satellite dishes everywhere) it maintains its very-old fashioned charm. We visited the ruins of wealthy Roman homes. I'm not sure how I feel about fake ruins... but we saw many of those. Apparently, the city wanted to make the ruins look more authentic, so they faked extra ruins. I guess it's so we could visualize what the original structures look like, but really: doesn't imitation ruin the ruins? Nonetheless, the drive to Vaison la Romaine was beautiful and so were each of the 5 sun-spent hours. The "excursion" was part of my Art/Architecture/Archeaology course so our prof was our guide and he explained the organization of the bedrooms (based on the location of the sun at given seasons) as well as how we can tell how they spent their time through artifacts.

A note on the bathrooms: Yes, the Romans did do this in the open- almost a social affair, but me, I'm not too keen on the hole in the floor deal. It was definately worth the 2 euro to track down a "vraie toillette" as we say (and all of which accompanies that).