Hats & Dinosaurs - you'd better believe it!

Woke to the sound of more rain. Dammit! It eased through the morning and gave us a chance to go out and walk around the town a bit. First wanted to mention the church of Our Lady (yes, another Notre Dame). It's unusual feature is its clock tower - which chimes every hour. Inside it is quite noteworthy with its main altar, six side altars or chapels and an impressive pipe organ.

Up near the railway station we discovered the local boulodrome (deserted, of course) where the locals play boules - also called pétanque. We've noticed these boulodromes in some of the other towns too.

After lunch we got in the car again and headed north to Espéraza, a town that boasts two unusual museums. The first is a dinosaur museum, the largest in France as this area is renowned for its discovery of a huge number dinosaur fossils. Their display is over 2000 sq m and features full sized skeletons of a tyrannosaur, a stegosaur, a 10 metre wide pterodactyl and many others. The whole display was very informative and would be a boon for the local school children as there is a big educational part to the museum too.

The other museum was attached; did you know that Espéraza was the site of the second largest hat making factory in Europe? Hence, the Musèe de la Chapellerie with displays of felt making and hat making - and here we were thinking it was an homage to a great Australian cricketing family. I'm sorry but we only lasted about three minutes (yawn).
Finished the day with a cleansing Perrier water (Steph) and local vin rouge (me) at the brasserie around the corner.