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Any Port in a Storm :: Beyond the Breakwater :: Post Cards :: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
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AuthorTopic: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?) (Read 1,095 times)
kerouac2
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A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Thread Started on Jul 18, 2010, 10:33pm »		[Quote]
When I am in the area, I have to confess that I enjoy visiting the Cathédrale d'Images in Les Baux de Provence. It was created in 1977 in an abandoned underground quarry. As the years go by, it has become increasingly sophisticated. The program changes once a year and is prepared by top professionals.

Just driving there is quite spectacular, because the Alpilles are extremely rugged. The first thing you see is the ruined château of Les Baux de Provence.

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It is a lovely tourist trap in itself and should be seen at least once. The village is nothing but tourist shops, and you have to pay even to park alongside the road in the middle of nowhere (this annoys me), but the site is exquisite. Many people do not make the connection with the name and do not realize that Les Baux gave its name to bauxite, aluminum ore.

Anyway, just a kilometer further along the road (and with free parking), is the Cathédrale d'Images.

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You buy your ticket (8.50€) and you enter the quarry. I went there just as it opened today, so I was there alone for a few minutes, and then it began to fill up fast. No matter how hot it is outside (today was 35° in Avignon), the temperature in the quarry is 16° and many people need a sweater or jacket.

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When you first go inside, you are blind due to the brightness outside, but then your eyes adjust and you can see all of the projections of photographs and films on the walls of the quarry, accompanied by haunting music and other sound effects.

This year's program is "Australia," the country that the French love the most for their phantasms of adventure.

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[photobucket height=480 width=640]http://s450.photobucket.com/albums/qq228/kerouac2/Avignon/Baux/?action=view¤t=89832bcc.pbw[/photobucket]

The whole loop of the presentation lasts probably 20 minutes and continues in a seamless cycle, so it doesn't matter when people walk in.

The current program covers the wildlife and Great Barrier Reef, aboriginal life, the arrival of Europeans, mining, road trains, modern cities, etc.


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This way out!

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In the courtyard, there was a big photo display about Australia and the sites covered by the Chinese photographer and French producer.

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Anyway, it just made me wish that other tourist traps were of the same quality.
« Last Edit: Sept 10, 2010, 4:46pm by kerouac2 »Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
kerouac2
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #1 on Jul 18, 2010, 10:59pm »		[Quote]
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« Last Edit: Jul 18, 2010, 11:28pm by kerouac2 »Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
frenchmystiquetour
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #2 on Jul 18, 2010, 11:43pm »		[Quote]
If that is cheesy then I am a cheese lover. While all the images are wonderful the ones that really move me are the ones of indigenous art because it speaks of the beautiful aboriginal cosmology and its notion of dream time. So haunting and evocative. But really everything shown is just a treat for the eye, not to mention the space in which it is all displayed. What else can you say but "COOL"! (temperature pun not intended)
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bixaorellana
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #3 on Jul 19, 2010, 12:39am »		[Quote]
Spectacular! What an amazing concept and brilliant, evocative, clever, artistic execution of it! (can you tell I like it?)

l've barely touched the website, which is extremely interesting. I wonder how long it took simply to prepare the space for a non-quarry use.

Love this -- thanks!
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spindrift
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #4 on Jul 19, 2010, 9:36am »		[Quote]
Very different; I found the exhibition rather spooky, perhaps it's meant to be. The way the cathedral itself is shaped out of the rock is impressive. It must have taken a long time to excavate the site.
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #5 on Jul 19, 2010, 9:55am »		[Quote]
Is that recent? I went to Les Baux de Provence in the late 1970s and there was just a quiet village with a few cats sitting on window sills and not many people around.
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kerouac2
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #6 on Jul 19, 2010, 12:53pm »		[Quote]
It opened in 1977.
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bjd
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #7 on Jul 19, 2010, 1:39pm »		[Quote]
I think I went in May 1977 -- must have missed it!
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auntieannie
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #8 on Jul 20, 2010, 5:28pm »		[Quote]
wow! very very interesting! I don't mind being a tourist in such situations either!
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #9 on Jan 17, 2011, 6:27pm »		[Quote]
Bad news

I am going to try to find out what happened.
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kerouac2
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #10 on Jan 17, 2011, 11:02pm »		[Quote]
Well, I read up on the situation and it appears that the operator's lease expired in 2009 and they did not take the necessary action to renew the lease. A new operator has taken over the lease and should have some sort of new "more modern" show installed within a year...

Who knows what it will be.... :-/
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kerouac2
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #11 on Jul 10, 2012, 5:39pm »		[Quote]
I am relieved to discover that this place has reopened "under new management," but the spectacle appears to be the same as it always was.

It is no longer called the "Cathédrale d'Images" but the "Carrières de Lumières." (the Quarries of Light)

Maybe I'll go again next week if I have time. It has always enchanted me in the past, if only to wander through chilly underground chambers on a sweltering day.
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lugg
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #12 on Jul 10, 2012, 6:47pm »		[Quote]

Quote:
Maybe I'll go again next week if I have time


Aha - so maybe some new posts from here/ and or Provence / the south of France are a real possibility in the short term ;D
« Last Edit: Jul 10, 2012, 6:49pm by lugg »Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
patricklondon
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Re: A pleasant tourist trap (Australia?)
« Reply #13 on Jul 11, 2012, 7:07am »		[Quote]
That Australia show looked to be imaginative, thought-provoking and modestly-priced - so not a "tourist trap" at all.

A tourist trap would be somewhere that appeals somewhere close to or below the lowest common denominator of an idea of a place or an event, and that everyone should be pushed through the same experience, with everything about the place geared to maximising revenue for the lowest value. Let's hope it isn't converted into one of those (though it's hard to see how it could be).
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