Sarlat-la-Canéda
Bright and early, we drove to Sarlat-la-Canéda, the most bustling market town in the Dordogne, and home of fois gras, nut liqueur, and men with nice blue eyes. In Sarlat, we bought provisions for our stay, including fresh girolles mushrooms, pepper salami, truffles, and herbs and packed them into our wicker basket, bought expressly for the purpose.
We returned to Sarlat on Tuesday, pleased to find it a lot less crowded than on market day. We were able to sample some more delicacies and I was thrilled to find ceps (porcini mushrooms) for sale at the covered market. We bought a couple of plump ones which were later cooked for dinner with fresh pasta back at our cottage. There was still plenty to see, including the headless accordionist and a man pulling hot, crispy sourdough bread out of the oven just in time for our lunch.
Beynac
We lunched in Beynac, with its remarkable château that rises from the top of a rock and overlooks the Dordogne river valley. There was a cute dad where we had our lunch of pizza and lemon and almond tarts.
Villa Emily
Around 4.00 on Saturday, we arrived at our homebase for the week, the Villa Emily, just outside the prehistoric wonderland of Les Eyzies. Our amiable Italian host met us at the gate with his perky poodle Patrón and led us to our lovely grapevine-covered stone cottage, where we unpacked our stuff and settled in. We had a great time at our cottage (even though we never received the promised toilet seat), mostly cooking meals with locally sourced ingredients and sitting outside under the stars drinking wine and talking. Our conversations included asking each other our Top Five childhood memories, things we think are good about each other, what we would like to accomplish, and other thought provoking topics. Those memories are our fondest, and can't be recreated, but we will try to take a little bit of that starlit magic back to our evenings at home.
Our villa had the use of the pool, which the dog enjoyed as much as we did. We tried reading our books, Running With Scissors and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by the pool on several days, but were usually driven inside by rain about half an hour into our session. This made for a less relaxed holiday than I'd planned, but probably a more memorable one.
Les Eyzies
Les Eyzies is rich with prehistoric remains and wondrous geological formations as we discovered visiting Le Grand Roc, a small cave featuring interesting crystal formations, and the very impressive Font-du-Gaume, a series of cave chambers with multi-coloured paintings of bison, mammoths, and reindeer that date back to 16,000 - 13,000 B.C. Our tour guide, though speaking no English, was an inspiration to me as a teacher: she was patient, humorous, knowledgeable, and enthused about her subject as if she had only just discovered it herself.
Rocamadour
Rising 492 feet above the Alzou Canyon, the towers, oratories, and precipitous rocks of Rocamadour were Wednesday morning's destination. We wound our way through the town's souvenir-packed streets and stopped to have a rather toothpasty-tasting menthe and water at a café. After admiring the views, which included a glimpse of a soaring eagle, we drove slightly further out of town to Alvignac to have lunch of pizza topped with local Rocamadour goat's cheese.
Canoeing in Les Eyzies
After a luxuriously lazy morning we decided to go canoeing on the muddy-watered Vézere river, a three hour trip that started from Le Moustier, a village just a short way from our cottage. It was a pleasant trip, and the light rainfall was completely forgotten when we experienced one of the highlights of our trip: a laddish water battle by two very fit young men from their canoe. Nick managed to coax the old digital camera into chronicling the event, and the resulting photos are a pleasure to behold. We returned that evening to Perigueux and visited its Le Cantu sauna for a relaxing wind down after our trip down the river.
St Léon-sur-Vézère
It was quite rainy in the morning, so we were glad that we had canoed the day before. We decided to get some food up the road in Montignac, where we found splendid replicas of the cave paintings at Lascaux rendered on the walls of the grocery store. On our return, we stopped in the beautiful St Léon-sur-Vézère, which easily earns its title as one of the most beautiful villages in France. We took lots of photos there, on the iron bridge, beside the river under the willow trees, and in the quaint village streets.
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