chiacchierata: Oct 11--D'ordogne

Exploring D'Ordogne. Oct 11

Thanks to Sven Haakanson jr for all the wonderful photos

Yesterday we got a slow start. Balika and Sven took a one hour walk from our cottage and the kids and I played on the swing, picked and ate concord grapes, walked through the walnut grove, and discovered the kiwi arbor on the neighboring property.

In the afternoon, we went to les Eyzies to visit the early-man archeological museum and admired the process of making flint tools, a wax Neanderthal family, a buffalo skeleton, and the life size mount of a megaceros (a huge moose-like animal).

Walking through Les Eyzies, every store had decorative geese with bows around their necks. Inside the stores, the shelves were piled high with cans and jars of duck and goose meat and liver, with and without truffles. Balika was completely grossed out by the picture of the smiling women force-feeding corn mash through a funnel to a unsuspecting goose. It is kind of gross but the locals seem to have a crop rotation going. After the field corn is harvested, grass takes over the fields and the milk cows, geese, and sheep are grazed on the same fields. Some fields are in their alfalfa / clover rotation--to fix nitrogen and make winter hay.

paths around our gite

slate roofs are still common in Sarlat

We decided to find a place for dinner in the city nearest to our cottage, Sarlat.
We walked through the mid-evil part of town looking for a restaurant that our gite-owner recommended. Sarlat has been registered by the French government as a museum of architecture and the mid-evil buildings are protected from being replaced by urban-renewal. No cars are allowed on the traverse through town. Our first choice for dinner looked open but the waiters were still enjoying their dinner and they informed us that they didn't open till 8:00 PM so we found another place at the end of an alley. We ordered 3 pizzas and one 14 Euro regional dinner. We shared the foie gras, the " well-done" beef was too raw for anyone but Sven, our waitress spoke no English so we had fun trying to figure out what the choices of sauces were and settled on "poivre vert" instead of "cepes." I was disappointed when we discovered that cepes means wild mushrooms. The creme brûlée had the prefect torched sugar crust.

At our cottage, Balika asked the kids what they wanted to do the following day. After studying the brochures, Eilidh decided that she wanted to see a cave with stalactites.

waiting to go into the cave

buildings built into the cliff face

In the morning, after 15 minutes on the trampoline, we drove to "les Grotte Des Grand Roc," a spectacular cave about 200 meters long filled with stalactites, hematite (sea urchin shaped crystals), and various colored limestone. No flash cameras were allowed but the kids took dozens of pictures in the semi-dark cave. How did we survive without digital, erasable images?
Our multiple-lingual guide explained that we were walking through a giant geode (thunder egg). That image made me feel like a microscopic entity inside one of those geodes sold in rock shops. The guide said that the cave would close for the winter on November 1. After that locals close their shutters, start up the fireplaces and generally stay home because the roads are icy and slippery.

From Beynac, looking over the D'ordogne river

Next we walked through another hilltop castle--Beynac, a 13th century castle that was the setting of battles between the French and English during the 100 years war.

After crepes, coffee creme, and oranginas we crossed the d'ordogne river and had a relaxing afternoon in "les jardins Marqueyssac." the kids ran through boxwood mazes and tried to get close-up pictures of wild peacocks.