2.5 hrs in Paris

We were not fully confident of our previously booked BA flight from Bordeaux to Gatwick, despite all the resumption of flights, so we ended up driving back up to Paris and taking the Eurostar over to London.  The drive back was infinitely better than the drive down, and we made good time - arriving in Paris with a few hours to spare.

As we drove into the city, I was almost absurdly happy to catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower.  I do love this city so much!

We returned the car at Gare du Nord and started walking south towards the heart of the city.  Specifically we headed for the Marais, where we first stopped at Dominique Picquier, a favorite stop of mine for fabric bags.  Nothing really inspired me, but then we noticed a lovely shop next door with a rainbow of brightly hued bags in the window - Stephane Verdino.

The gentleman who assisted us was charming and a great salesman, but the closer of the deal was the designer Stephane himself, with whom we had a nice conversation.  So I bought this bag, in beige - totally didn't need it but it's a lovely bag.  BTW it cost a lot less in France...

After that, it was time for my ice cream of the day, which I had at Amorino, a great little stop right across from the apartment we rented 2 years ago.  Their speciality is fashioning the ice cream into a flower on your cone or cup.  I had salted caramel, chocolate and straciatella.  It was excellent!

Then we rounded the corner to Mariage Frères, and stopped off at their tea salon.  Where the cheapest pot of tea was €9 and there were a number of much more expensive teas.  After one of my last trips there, I am always careful about noticing the price now!

I had a nice little tea plate with a scone and a madeleine.  The scone paled in comparison to the real thing in the U.K. but the madeleine was light and delicious.  And a pot of one of the more obscure kinds of Earl Grey tea.

And finally, a short stop at the store to purchase some tea and have a spirited discussion (in French, no less!) with the tea man (pictured below) about what new kinds to try and buy.  Just so you know, Mariage is available in the U.S. but just a few kinds.  When you are in Paris, you will see that they have 14 kinds of Earl Grey tea alone!

And that was the end of our brief, costly but very rewarding sojourn in Paris.  Then it was off on the Eurostar back to London for one night, then back to the U.S. the next day.

Our last meal in the Dordogne

On our last evening, we decided to walk down to the village for dinner.  The walk down is quite steep but yields some very pretty views of the valley, not to mention all the lovely limestone houses along the way.

We had dinner at La Petite Tonnelle, which was named as the best restaurant in the village in our handy-dandy house book.  We sat outside and enjoyed the evening air as the sky darkened.

I started with a plate of roasted asparagus with slices of smoked duck breast.  It was a lovely starter.

My main course was a couple of carved slices of leg of lamb, served with some excellent couscous (it's in the pastry tower) and a terrine of some sort that was just ok.

For dessert, I had the canaille de citron, some lemon mousse in a light filo shell, served with raspberry sauce and some raspberry ice cream.  Alas, it looked better than it tasted.  Although I still finished it ;)

 All in all, a very nice meal. Next time I'm in Beynac, I'm gladly stopping by here again!

A nice ending to a busy day.  Now, I must go pack...

The castle tour

On the last day of our Dordogne stay, we finally made it to the two major castles in the area.  The first was Castelnaud, which I really wanted to visit because I'm reading a book about an American couple who bought a little house in the shadow of the castle back in 1985.  "A Castle in the Backyard" has been great so far.  And I was determined to find their house from the descriptions in the book!

The town of Castelnaud is pretty tiny but the castle is impressive.  It's on the other side of the Dordogne River from Beynac and the two castles have been rivals throughout history.  They can see each other very clearly and were on opposite sides of the One Hundred Years War.  Here's the view of Beynac from Castelnaud.

To add to an already excellent day, I found the artisanal ice cream I liked so much and had a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of salted caramel.  Yum.

Finally, we visited our castle next door, Chateau Beynac.  It took us quite a few days to get here, considering we are staying in its shadow!  It's a bigger castle than Castelnaud, and is apparently still occupied (a few rooms) by its owner, who bought it in 1961.  There was a magnificent view from the top of the ramparts, and we stood there surveying our little town with a touch of sadness in anticipation of our departure.

Now it's time for a real cave...

Since our taste had been whetted by the reproduction caves of Lascaux II, we headed to the only cave in France with polychromatic cro-magnon cave drawings that was still open to the public.  La Grotte de Font de Gaume allows only 180 visitors each day, in small groups of no more than 15 people.

It was nice to visit this after the Lascaux visit, since it really made me appreciate how difficult it was to preserve these drawings.  It was also good because I heard the English tour at Lascaux, which made it easier for me to understand the French tour at Font de Gaume today!

Font de Gaume was discovered in 1901 and not particularly protected for a few years, so there is early 20th century graffitti that defaces quite a few of the drawings.  It was a sacred site for our prehistoric ancestors, same as Lascaux, and they painted many of the same animals - primarily bison and horses.  It was much harder to discern the drawings and they use the same principle of leveraging the natural contours of the rock.

Here's a photo of the postcard they had of their best preserved bison.

I predict that Font de Gaume will also be closed to the general public in my lifetime.

Our Pre-History Tour

The first piece of good news we got this morning is that we didn't have to try and exchange our Hertz car today.  Phew - I was budgeting a few hours to try and make the change since we would have likely needed to go up to Bergerac.

So we headed off to Les Eyzies in the late morning and had a nice lunch while looking up at the statue of Cro-Magnon man next to the buildings set into the rock.  Not a very pretty town and apparently a zoo in the summer.  I'd give it a miss.

After lunch we took a little detour to La Madeleine, a troglodyte village in the Vezère valley.  Troglodyte refers to a prehistoric race of people that lived in caves, dens, or holes.  We didn't really mean to spend 40 minutes here, but the sign from the main road looked promising.  The most beautiful building in the little village was this petite church built into the rock.  There were even gothic arches inside.

After that, we headed over to La Roque de St. Christophe, another very impressive troglodyte village where up to 1,000 people lived back in the medieval days.  It's interesting that cro-magnon man picked particular sites, and they were reused much later by people in the middle ages.  A good and defensible site is hard to find!

Finally, here's a recreation of what the whole village in the rock might have looked like.

There are a total of 5 terraces, although not all are currently accessible.  It was a lot of fun tramping around the caves though, and they did a great job of describing how each cave might have been set up, so you could really picture it. 

What an educational day!

A Pilgrimage to Rocamadour

In the afternoon, we drove a windy, mountain-hugging road to Rocamadour, the famous cliff-hugging village in the Lot valley and a noted pilgramage site in the middle ages.  We parked on the bottom road in the picture, walked up to the main village and paid €2 to ride up an elevator 50m (these modern pilgrims had a lot less grit than the medieval ones ;)  The elevator was actually very cool with glass walls where you could see the interior rock face as we went up.

We walked around the ramparts up top and also around the main church, which is built right into the rock face.

And then descended the steps to the main village, which was filled with somewhat garish souvenir shops - reminding me a lot of Carcasonne.

Finally we stopped for a drink on a panoramic hotel terrace, where I indulged in my second ice-cream of the day.  Alas, it wasn't terribly good, quelle dommage!

Un Déjeuner à Sarlat

After wandering around the market for a while, we decided it was time for lunch.  We picked the picturesque over researching some place with known good food.  And we ended up at Les Îles at the Place de la Liberté.  It's the café pictured below on the left.  Doesn't it meet and exceed the picturesque test?!

We sat and had a nice lunch from le menu du jour, and watched the market being torn down all around us.  I had a foie gras salad, duck confit with potatoes sarladaises (potatoes fried in duck fat) and for dessert, two scoops of ice cream, pictured below.  The first ice-cream of the day!  Pictured next to it is the apple tart that was just ok.