Oct 13---Lascaux ll

Lascaux--

It was market day in Sarlat so we got an early start and parked near "goose square." There we took pictures of the kids hugging the statues of the portly, enlarged-liver, bronze geese. I was on a mission to buy cans of goose liver to bring home so going through the mid-evil road, I sampled goose and duck liver at a dozen booths then tried the samples of herbed goat cheese, walnut tarts, and jams. I returned to the booth at which the producer had won a bronze star in Paris and it was slightly cheaper than that of the booth that seemed to be catering to most of the American tourists.  I bought 3 cans of goose pate and 3 of duck.
Foie=liver
Gras=rich or oily
D'oie= of goose
De canard= of duck

The last booth at the market was fortuitously that of a local wine dealer and after all that foie gras I was thirsty so, even though it was only 10:30 AM, I sampled his vin rouge and his vin rose, settled on a bottle of the rose for 4.5 euros (about $6.00), to take back to the cottage.
We continued on to a children's museum and animal park where the extinct large black bulls depicted in the caves have been reproduced by reverse cross breading of modern animals.
As we walked the empty park through the pens of donkeys, goats, european deer and cows, we stumbled on a life-size, realistic wholly mammoth. A great photo-op as Eilidh posed next to it.

After lunch we had scheduled a tour through Lascaux ll. My expectations were low for this tour because it was a mock-up of the most famous of caves--lascaux. The cave had been discovered by two teenagers in 1942 when their dog fell into a hole. They returned the next day and dug into the cavern and discovered a complex of caves covered with almost 2000 images. In the twelve years that the caves were open to the public, a million people toured the caves until the paintings began to deteriorate from the carbon dioxide. The cave was closed to the public and a 15year project started in which replicas of the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery were built-- artists used prehistoric tools and methods to duplicate the paintings To see more about caves...link to... .http://www.thisfrenchlife.com/thisfrenchlife/2009/07/virtual-lascaux-caves.html

One of the horses, reproduced in the gift shop.

It was truly stunning to stand inside a room where 17,000 year-old animals seemed to swirl around us. Pictures of the art cannot duplicate the feeling of standing next to a 17 foot bull surrounded by herds of horses and deer. A couple of twe.lve foot bulls charge through the cave, a bear stalks from below, and horses manes flow as they run. In the cool, dark cave, one can almost hear the galloping of the ancient hooves. It's like being in the middle of a stampede.