2022_09/10 France – Lynn's Travel Adventures

Back to Paris

Yesterday (Thursday) was a very restful day. I did get out of my jammies but only to go out to get our morning baguette and then after breakfast to take Peter for a haircut. The rest of the day it was sweats and the couch. We watched a couple of movies, and I did a small load of clothes. Of course, every load is a small load as the washers are much smaller than ours at home.

While strolling around town waiting for Peter to finish at the barber, I found the WWI monument that virtually every town in France has.

That was it for yesterday. Today we left our beautiful house for Giverny (Gee-ver-nee) and Claude Monet’s house. Monet was one of the fathers of impressionistic art and is most famous for his water lilies. The best part about the house was the art. It was its own art museum, with not just his paintings, but those by Degas, Pissaro, a large collection of Japanese prints plus so many more.

The house is long and narrow. This is the side to the left of the front door. The house in the other direction was just as long.

All of the paintings in the lounge are his work.

And a very blue kitchen.

Then we wandered around the gigantic garden. It was a beautiful day so that made the garden even more special.

This is the bridge in many of his paintings.

Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies painted in 1899.

You can barely see the house through the thick garden.

There were so many beautiful flowers, but these were our favorites.

Then it was on to lunch on this quaint little street.

Restaurant was the building with the green awning.

And I had Quiche Lorraine. Both were delicious.

After lunch it was back in car for the drive to the Paris airport Hilton where we are spending the night. We have an 8:30AM flight to Amsterdam and didn’t want to mess with taking the car back so early.

Returning the car was easier said than done because it took me an hour and 5 stops to find a gas station that actually had gas. There’s been a strike at the major oil refinery for the last 2 weeks which means many stations are out of gas. I was just about to take the car back with only half a tank and damn the consequences when I finally found a station that had gas to sell.

Once I got back up to my room, I decided that I deserved a nice, sweet, fruity drink so we headed to the bar.

I have no idea what was in it, but it was delicious.

Then, since we hadn’t had dessert in two whole days, we decided some sweets were in order.

Peter had two scoops of ice cream (boring!), but I had this yummy molten chocolate fudge cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. Between that and the drink my blood sugar level must be sky high.

There is no airport shuttle and while one of the terminals is only a 2-block walk, we would then have to get on the train to the next terminal and walk quite a while longer to get to the KLM check in. Trying to do that with Peter pushing his new wheelchair holding the 2 backpacks while I drag the 24″ suitcase is a bit much for 6AM so we’ve ordered a taxi.

We’ve spent the last 5 weeks in France, and while I don’t know the exact mileage, we covered a lot of territory. These maps only include the places we spent the night, not all the side trips.

We did a little crisscrossing in the last week because we kept changing our minds about where we wanted to go. The driving was easier than in the UK, not only because I was on the correct side of the road, but because most of the driving was on a highway. Of course, the tolls cost a fortune (over $50 just this Wed; and $40 just to drive through Switzerland…yikes!) but better tolls than two lane roads.

We loved our time in France, but we’re ready to move on and have some adventures in the Netherlands and Belgium. We look forward to sharing them with you. Have a wonderful evening everyone. Love to all!

Cherbourg-en-Cotentin

Not much to report today. We had a leisurely morning before heading to the Liberation Museum in Cherbourg. It was way up on a hill, so the view of the port was gorgeous.

It was a relatively small museum but had a very nice display and it is free on Wednesdays so that made it even better.

One of the rooms had displays of objects used in everyday life during the occupation from June 1941 to 26 Jun 1944.

After about 45 minutes at the museum, we headed to a small fishing village on the Channel, Barfleur. According to Wikipedia, it is one of the most beautiful villages in France. I didn’t get a picture of the village, but here’s one of the small harbor.

Here’s one Wikipedia had of the village.

We’d brought our sandwiches to eat for lunch, but it was very windy and a little chilly, so we decided to save them for dinner and have lunch at a small restaurant in Barfleur.

Peter’s Margurita pizza with olives…who does that to pizza??

After lunch it was a 40-minute drive home where we watched the 6th Harry Potter movie. We’ve been watching them since we visited Alnwick Castle in Scotland last month. Only one more to go; we’ll probably watch it tomorrow.

So that was our day. Not exactly an adventure but we enjoyed it. Tomorrow we’re going to do even less. It’s time for a rest day before a hectic Friday when we take the car back to Paris. I may get out of my jammies…or maybe not.

Operation Overlord

As expected, there was nothing to post yesterday as it was a run errands and drive day. But here’s a picture of the old city I took from the balcony at the hotel in Carcassonne. It really is magnificent.

Yesterday’s errands took longer than I thought they would, so we only drove for about 5 1/2 hours before stopping for the night. We planned to get a little closer to Normandy, but it was already after 5pm and I was getting tired. Luckily, the rest stop where we pulled off to find a hotel on booking.com, actually had an Ibis Hotel on site. It’s only the 2nd rest stop we’ve seen with a hotel. The Ibis chain isn’t great, but it was clean and they had a handicap room and a lift. Sold.

This morning we got an early start as we still had a 4 1/2-hour drive, which actually took closer to 5 hours due to construction and a rest break in the middle. Our first stop was the American Military Cemetery in Normandy. We’ve been there before but wanted to visit again. The cemetery covers over 172 acres and contains the graves of almost 9400 military dead, most of whom died during the landing or the following operations.

Because this is the most visited overseas military cemetery with over 1 million visitors per year, no one is allowed to walk among the gravesites as in other cemeteries. Written requests must be submitted for wreath laying requests. The one grave Peter would have liked to see is Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the son of President Teddy Roosevelt. TR, Jr., was the only general to land by sea with the first waves of troops on June 6th. He was one of the first men off his landing craft at Utah Beach and continued to lead his troops from the beach. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. Here’s a picture of the marker I found on Wikipedia.

Unlike George Patton (buried in Luxemburg Cemetery), this grave is mixed among the other dead. Actually, Patton was originally buried among his men as he had requested, but it was such a tourist attraction that the large number of visitors was causing significant damage to the surrounding graves. His remains were moved to another part of the cemetery where people could see it without damaging other sites.

Peter at Patton’s grave in Luxemburg in 2018. Patton is the only 4-star general to be buried at an American Battle Monument Commission cemetery.

Here are a few other pictures we took at the cemetery.

The inside isn’t as ornate as some of the others we’ve seen.

The Memorial and Reflecting pool. This is at the front of the cemetery.

A 22′ bronze statue entitled, “Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves”.

Then it was on to Omaha Beach Memorial. We’d also seen this in 2018, but since we were only a few minutes away, we stopped by again.

The sculpture is called Les Braves and it consists of three elements:
The wings of Hope: So that the spirit which carried these men on June 6th, 1944, continues to inspire us, reminding us that together it is always possible to change the future.
Rise, Freedom! So that the example of those who rose against barbarity, helps us remain standing strong against all forms of inhumanity.
The Wings of Fraternity. So that this surge of brotherhood always reminds us of our responsibility towards others as well as ourselves.

We only spent a few minutes here before heading across the street to the Operation Overlord Museum. There are many D-Day museums in the area, most of which we saw in 2018. This one was closed the last time we were here, so we decided to pop in for a visit. The museum had hundreds of photos, stories and dioramas.

This is Rupert. Over 500 of these were dropped in 4 locations away from the real drop zones to try and fake out the enemy.

There were hundreds of these large metal thingies (even Peter doesn’t remember what they’re called) across the beaches to make it difficult for men coming off the landing craft to make it to the safety of the cliffs.

Our final stop before heading to our new flat was the German Military Cemetery. I visited with mom in 2006, but Peter and I missed it in 2018. As you can see, it’s not nearly as impressive as the American cemetery, but it’s very well maintained.

I randomly stopped at the marker and saw that he died on D-Day. Then I noticed that he was born in 1901, which means he could have been a veteran of WWI as well. He would have been young but it’s possible.

We arrived at out new flat late afternoon and settled in very quickly. It’s a beautiful 2BR house in Carentan, in the middle of the peninsula. Like every other town on the Cotentin Peninsula, it was the site of a major battle between June 6th and June 13th. The 101st Airborne Division (the Screaming Eagles) were involved in the battle. For all of you Band of Brothers fans, episode 3 (Replacements) is about this battle.

The city center is only a couple of blocks long, but it has a market and a boulangerie, and that’s all were going to need. We’re staying until Friday morning when we head back to Paris to drop off the car.

Not sure what we’re going to do tomorrow, but I’m sure we’ll find some way to keep ourselves busy and out of trouble.

A Castle, a Grotto and a Walled City

As you may have noticed, I didn’t post yesterday (Saturday) as by the time we got settled it was too late and I was too tired. If I had posted I could have titled it “Oh What a Day We Had, Deuxieme Partie (Part Two)”. No, we didn’t have more bugs, we actually didn’t even get checked in, but I’ll save that story for later.

The day started out well enough with a relatively short drive from Bayonne to Pau to see the Chateau. We hadn’t planned to see anymore castles or chateaux, but this one had special historical interest. King Henry IV, the first of a long line of Bourbon kings of France, was born in the castle. He was also known as Henry the Great or Good King Henry. His great, great, grandson was Louis XVI lost his head in the French Revolution.

A view of the mountains from the castle. As you can see it was a beautiful day.

So, we thought this was interesting and since it wasn’t really out of the way, we stopped for a visit. Unlike the other castles we’ve visited, we could only see this one on a guided tour. Unfortunately, the only tours were in French, but we had an English guidebook and there were plaques in every room that had explanations in English, so we did okay.

This desk has 141 drawers, many hidden compartments and 4 safes (boxes with key holes).

That stepstool isn’t high enough for me to get on that bed. This is the bed the king was born in.

The coolest part of the tour was to see the giant turtle shell that served as a cradle for the future King Henry IV.

All the decorations that hold up the shell were added in the 19th century.

After a challenging drive out of the Pau city center (construction, one-way streets and a demonstration march) we finally made it back to the toll road for the 45-minute drive to Lourdes, where we planned to spend two nights. This is where the day went off the rails. We stopped by our Airbnb flat to park the car and thought we’d go in to look at the flat. The listing said it was on the 6th floor with a lift. Great, we love lifts. Except the lift started on the 1st floor (versus the ground floor) and it ended at the 5th floor. So, we had one flight of stairs to climb at the bottom, and one flight at the top. OK, so I’m already not happy but thought we’d make the best of it. I opened the door and found the flat a mess from the last guest. To be fair it was only 1:30pm and check in wasn’t until 4pm so we closed up the house and decided to walk into town. Before we left, I messaged the host to say we’d be there between 4-5pm but got no response.

To be continued.

Once in town, we walked to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes. Visiting the Sanctuary is the only reason anyone comes to Lourdes. This is the site where, in 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous had 18 visions of a lady who said she was the Immaculate Conception. Eventually the Catholic Church confirmed the authenticity of Bernadette’s visions. She became a nun, died in 1879 at the age of 35 and was canonized a saint in 1933.

Bernadette’s Chapel in the upper basilica of the sanctuary.

The sanctuary includes several religious buildings and monuments around the grotto of Massabielle, the place where Bernadette’s visions occurred.

There were 3 or 4 alcoves around the outside of the building. I thought this was the prettiest.

There are three basilicas at the sanctuary, and it turns out we missed one of them. The largest one is the Basilica of Pius X and is underground. I have no idea where the entrance was as I don’t remember seeing anything going down. Here’s a picture I got from Wikipedia.

The church on the ground level is the Basilica Notre-Dame of the Rosary.

This was as far as Peter went as getting to the upper basilica required either climbing a lot of stairs or walking up a very steep ramp, neither of which he wanted to tackle. So, I left him in the at the Rosary Basilica while I ventured out on my own.

The upper basilica is the Basilica of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.

The most important part of the Sanctuary is the grotto where Bernadette had her visions. The queue wasn’t too long so it only took about 5 minutes before we were able to get to that holy spot.

Massabielle Grotto; I got this picture off the Wikipedia page as it gives the bigger perspective than I was able to get as we walked by. In fact, I was so zoned into the small pond with the trickling water I never even noticed the statue of Mary on top of the grotto.

Here’s a picture I took. You can just barely see the water trickling down the center rock.

The large white thing in front of the grotto is a giant candelabra.

Pulling back even further, you can see how the Sanctuary is built over the grotto.

In 2018, we visited the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal where in 1917, three shepherd children saw the Virgin Mary. The site now has a large shrine, a modern church, and a small chapel. The chapel is built over the site of the apparition. What I liked about Lourdes, is that we saw the actual grotto where Bernadette had her visions, rather than just a building over the site like at Fatima. I imagine the grotto looks much like it did in 1859. About 4 million people/year visit this site and it was way more emotional than I expected. We’re so very glad we made the trip to see it.

Back to the Airbnb flat story. So, after visiting the Sanctuary, we stopped for a bite to eat and to kill time until 4pm check in. Food wasn’t great, but we made up for it with dessert.

Peter is ready to dig into our ice cream sundae. It was delicious.

After lunch, I messaged Armand saying we would arrive in 30 minutes….no response. When we got back to the flat, Peter waited in the car while I went back up to the apartment….still not ready. I messaged the host again with a deadline of how long we’d wait…no response. After about 30 minutes of waiting, we made a reservation on booking.com for a B&B about an hour away and left. We figured that as long as we had to go someplace else, we might as well head in the direction of Sunday’s drive. Problem solved, right?

Oh, wait…there’s more. We drive to our new 4-star B&B only to have GPS state “you have arrived”, in the middle of the street with nothing that resembles a B&B. I pulled over and checked email to find a message from the owner saying they couldn’t accommodate us as they were closed this weekend. While trying to contact booking.com, I received an email from them saying they’d found another place for us if we wanted it. By this time, it was after 6:30 and we were tired, so we accepted the new reservation and headed off. Eighteen minutes later, GPS says, “you have arrived” except we were on a dirt road in the middle of a herd of sheep. Well, not exactly in the middle, but they were on both sides of the road. I reloaded the GPS with the address and finally got to a house on the hill above the herd of sheep. Apparently, we rented a room in someone’s house. They were very happy to see us, which came as no surprise as we are literally in the middle of nowhere so I can’t imagine they get many guests. But we did have a pretty view of the mountains.

Beautiful sunset over the Pyrenees from our hosts’ backyard.

They are a lovely couple, and the room was clean and had an ensuite bath with a walk-in shower. So, it all worked out ok in the end. I’m getting too old for this.

To put a bow on the Lourdes Airbnb flat story, at about 8pm I finally heard from Armand who said his service provider forgot to clean the flat and he was happy to give us a refund. I told him we’d left town and expected a full refund for both nights. About 9:30pm he messaged me that the house was ready, and we could check in tomorrow. After a few back-and-forth messages that started to get ugly (him, and I quote, “you are causing me to lose a night of booking”, and me “please don’t blame me, talk with your service provider.”), we finally received a full refund for both nights. Seriously, I really am getting too old for this.

Today (Sunday) we left our room in the middle of nowhere around 9am for the hour drive to the walled city of Carcassonne. I had been here with mom in 2006 and thought Peter would enjoy it.

Carcassonne has been inhabited since Neolithic times. It was conquered by the Romans and the Visigoths. It was under Islamic rule for a while and the current fortress was built in the Middle Ages. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Our first stop, as always, was the Petite Train. This took us around the outside of the city walls. We would have never been able to walk around the whole place, so this was the only way to see it.

The back part of the city was the best part. The part on the far left of the photo is the chateau. We could have toured it, but we didn’t. No more stairs for us unless we have to.

The walls are in remarkable condition given their age.

This is what the narrator on the train called the “modern city” of Carcassonne. I don’t know, it looks pretty old to me.

After the train ride, we had a leisurely lunch at one of the cafes in the old town, then walked around the cobbled streets for a little while.

The streets were filled with shops. In fact, the only things we saw within the walls were shops, restaurants and hotels. We thought about staying within the walls but it’s pedestrian only and we would have had to drag luggage through the streets. Not an option.

By 3pm, Peter was getting tired, so we headed back to the car and the hotel, just about 100 meters up the road. They were so accommodating to our needs and gave us a ground floor wheelchair accessible room. Not only is it step free, but there are grab bars in both the toilet area and shower. Perfect for us.

Neither of us slept very well last night so I think it will be an early night tonight. Tomorrow is a drive day with a stop here in town to run a few errands, so I’m not sure there will be anything to post, but who knows. We may find something interesting along the way.

Day Trip to Spain

Buenas noches. At least it’s noches here. Not sure what it is where you are or when you’re reading this. Today (Friday) we drove about 35 miles west to the beach resort town of Donastia-San Sebastian, Spain. We had originally planned to spend several nights here and decided to do it as a day trip instead.

Just like the last few days, it started off cloudy then later in the afternoon the sun came out. But even cloudy, it’s a beautiful city. We started with a walk along the beach where there were quite a few people surfing. Or, trying to surf. The waves weren’t very high.

Then we headed to Tourist Info to figure out what we were going to do. On our way we saw…

The Urumea River with the Pyrenees mountains in the background.

The building in the background on the right is the theater.

Pretty square just off the river. The theater is to the right of where the photo ends.

No one is certain how old the city is, but the first record is from the early 11th century. The medieval city burned down in 1489 and the cathedral wasn’t built until the late 19th century.

The Cathedral wasn’t open, but we got a pic from the outside.

After getting a map from tourist info, we wandered the Old City for a little while looking for a place for a quick lunch. Most restaurants were serving big meals, but we finally found a bar serving small bites.

Peter had a potato omelet that he said was delicious.

I had a couple of Pintxos which are Basque tapas. The biggest difference between them is that tapas is free with drinks, and I had to pay for the Pintxos.

The one in front is fresh tuna with a shrimp and the one in back is a slice of ham with a deviled egg, shrimp and an olive. Peter ate the olive. They were both exceptional.

After our quick snack we headed over to the Petite Train, which allowed us to see more of the city than we could have by foot. On our way we found a few interesting photo ops.

I have no idea what this statue was all about, but I thought it was interesting.

A sand artist was busy on the beach.

After the train ride, we headed back to the car, stopping for a snack.

Peter’s chocolate eclair filled with ice cream.

Mine was called Triangulo. It was very light chocolate sponge cake with a light cream, or maybe, mousse between the layers. It was soooo good.

This was the view that came with our tasty treats.

The Town Hall in the foreground with Mount Urgull and the Sacred Heart statue in the background.

Tourist info said that if we drove to the top of the mountain, we’d have a pretty view of the bay. We didn’t but here’s what it would have looked like.

Bay from high atop a mountain we didn’t drive to. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

The sun was finally out just as we were walking to the car. This is the river dumping into the Atlantic Ocean. Very pretty.

We only stayed for about 5 hours, but we thoroughly enjoyed our time in Spain. Tomorrow, we head about 3 hours east to Lourdes, where the peasant girl, Bernadette saw the Virgin Mary in the grotto. That will be our home for the weekend.

Bayonne

For the first time in a week, we have a great internet connection. Actually, the last two days we didn’t have any internet connection, so I had to do the blog on my phone….not an easy task.

We left our beautiful country cottage about 9am and headed southwest to Bayonne, on the Bay of Biscayne. Originally, we planned to go to San Sebastian Donastia in Spain for 3 nights but decided to stay here instead and do Spain as a day trip tomorrow as it’s less than an hour away.

Our first stop in Bayonne was the L’Atelier de Chocolat, the chocolate museum. It’s also a small chocolate factory so as we read plaques about how chocolate is made, we watched them actually making it.

The first step of the process is to get harvest the cocoa beans, which they get from the tropics of central and south America. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a cocoa bean before, so I was surprised at how big the bean is.

The large bean was about 6-8 inches long. Each bean yields about 40 smaller beans. The smaller beans are the ones that get processed into chocolate.

Here’s a very short video of a worker adding the eyes to a chocolate face. There were 3 people making the face; this was the last step.

https://youtu.be/OxXgB6knnCI

And here’s the final product.

Then we headed into the city center, found a place to park (after making a wrong turn into a bus only lane…oops) and headed to the Cathedral of Saint Mary of Bayonne built from the 13th – 16th centuries.

Cathedral in the background of this cute walking street.

It isn’t particularly large, and the outside doesn’t have the intricate carvings of some of the other cathedrals we’ve visited. But the inside is quite different from others, with painted panels instead of carvings. Even parts of the ceiling were painted. Very beautiful.

One cool thing about this cathedral is that it’s on the pilgrimage route from Lourdes to Santigo de Compostelo in Spain, which Peter and I visited in 2018. We’ll visit Lourdes this weekend so we will have seen the beginning, the end and a stop along the way of this famous pilgrimage route.

Just outside the Cathedral was our lunch spot, a creperie. We’ve been in France for 3 1/2 weeks and I’ve only had one galette (savory crepe) so was very excited that this restaurant had them. It was so good; even Peter liked it.

Filled with ham and cheese, topped with a creamy mushroom sauce. I even ate all my salad.

After lunch we walked about 15 minutes to the Basque Museum. When I think of Basque, I think of Spain, so I was surprised to find a Basque Museum here. Well, it turns out that there is a French Basque Region and Bayonne is right in the middle of it. Who knew??

The exhibit contains artifacts from ancient times (first human remains found in the area are from 150,000 years ago) as well as 19th century artifacts.

The headstones are the type used by the Basque in the 18th century.

Gorgeous glass lamp shade…hmm, I wonder how hard this would be to make. Oh, Cynthia????

There was also an art exhibit by a local painter made good, Leon Bonnat. The temporary exhibit was being shown in honor of the 100th anniversary of his death.

After the museum it was time to check into our Airbnb flat. I’m not wild about the neighborhood and we had to walk down about 10 stairs to get to our “garden apartment”, but it’s a nice place and the internet is GREAT!!! So, who needs more. Since we had a big lunch, we’ll eat light tonight. I bought a baguette this afternoon, so we’ll probably have sandwiches. Depending on weather tomorrow we’ll either head to the beaches in Spain or maybe take a drive through the Pyrenees Mountains which start just outside of town. We’ll let you know how it goes.

Night everyone and thanks for following our adventures.

Bordeaux

Yesterday (Tuesday) was the first day in over 11 weeks that it rained all day. We were going to drive around this Medoc region, but between the rain and being tired after two tough nights (bugs and Peter being sick), we decided a day off for rest was in order.

We found a mall about 20 minutes from here where we picked up a few things we needed and groceries. We spent the rest of the day in our beautiful house enjoying lunch and naps in the afternoon. It was a very pleasant way to spend the day.

Here are some of the pictures of the house I took today. As you can see the sun is shining again.

Here’s our cute little house. Our hosts (Patrick and Maya) live in a much bigger house next door.

They have a ton of acreage, and the backyard is beautiful.

Today started cloudy but turned into a sunny, warm day. We drove to a park and ride about 20 minutes from here and took the tram into Bordeaux. Because there are strick guidelines as to what can be built on the left bank of the Garonne River (old town side), it looks much like it did in the 18th and 19th centuries.

We started out with a tourist bus around the city which gave us a great overview of the city. Then we walked back to a few of the places we wanted to see more up close and personal.

Grosse Cloche; the old clock tower. This was taken from the bus as it was too far to walk back later. This is one of the oldest belfries in France. The 18th century bell weighs 17000 pounds and sits over and sits over an old dungeon.

The Pont de Pierre sits over the Garonne River. It was built by instructions of Napoleon I and is 200 years old this year.

After the bus tour, we started walking down the Esplanade but first we stopped for a local sweet treat. The canele is a small pastry flavored with rum and vanilla with a soft custard center and a dark caramelized crust. It was delicious. I don’t like rum, but it was so lightly flavored I couldn’t taste it.

A clseup of the fountain at the base of the monument.

There is an amusement park set up in the park. By the time we were leaving mid-afternoon, it was open.

We stopped for lunch and since it had been over a week since we had pizza, we split this delicious one.

The restroom in the restaurant was through the wine cellar.

This is the Place de la Bourse with the Three Graces fountain. The original fountain was of King Louis XV but that was destroyed during the French Revolution.

Porte Cailhau is one off the original city gates and was constructed in 1450.

Our final stop before heading back to the tram was the Cathedral of St. Andrew. By the time we got there it was closed for lunch so we didn’t make it inside but it was gorgeous from the outside.

Close up of the gold statue on top of the tower.

After the Cathedral it was a walk down the pedestrian street back to the tram. We were home by 3:15 so had plenty of time to enjoy some wine on our beautiful patio.

Tomorrow, we head south to Bayonne. Hopefully the nice weather will hold while we’re at the beach. Love to all.

Saint Emilion

Before we get into today’s adventure, which luckily, did not include bugs, here are a few photos of the beautiful hotel we stayed in last night. The Moulin de Vigonac was built on the banks of the river Dronne in the 16th century and was originally a mill.

The old paddlewheels from the mill generated our own little rapids.

We were the first ones there for dinner (barbaric Americans; but really it was 7pm so that’s not too bad), so we picked a table by the roaring fire.

Unfortunately, shortly after this picture was taken, Peter said he didn’t feel well so I took him to our room. He insisted I go back to dinner as we had already ordered. Luckily, they hadn’t started making our main course yet, so they were able to cancel his dinner. I kept checking on him during my 2-hour meal (3 courses) and he slept most of the evening.

So sorry foodies, I was so distracted by the fire, Peter’s tummy troubles and my conversation with a lovely British couple at the next table that I totally forgot to take pics of my delicious meal of melon in wine appetizer, duck confit main course and pear tart for dessert. This was my second BIG meal in two days, which is so unusual, but oh, so good.

The restaurant was just lovely with its 16th century stone walls.

The Moulin de Vigonac is not a hotel you’ll stumble into on your drive through town. We turned down several small roads before the final turn on a tiny “road” put us into the parking lot. I found it on booking.com then made the reservation on the hotel’s website. Our room was the lovely “Helene”. How cool that they’ve named all the rooms. It’s a family run business owned by the restaurant’s chef. It’s an absolutely delightful place and we’d stay here again in a heartbeat. The region is beautiful filled with chateaux, picturesque towns and amazing people. There’s also another Cro-Magnum prehistoric cave in the area. But one of those is enough for us.

That takes us to today’s journey to the pretty town of Saint Emilion. It was just over an hour from our hotel, but we got a late start and we stopped to buy Peter a new cane as his was too short, so it was past noon before we got there and found a place to park. Like all medieval to towns, it’s all hills, and since it had rained a little, the cobblestones were slippery. We managed to make it around town without falling and had delicious burgers for lunch.

Overlook above Saint Emilion. Beautiful town even with the clouds.

This town has an 11th century church built into the rock. We weren’t able to get in, but here it is from the outside.

There was another church we could go in. It was fairly small but pretty. The unique feature of this one was the small section on original 13th century frescos.

We stopped at a winery to Peter a bottle of his preferred dry red wine, so we’re both set for the next few days. This area is red wine country and we passed about 30 different wineries. Every other shop in town was a wine shop. You certainly won’t go thirsty around here.

We are spending the next 3 nights in a delightful cottage in the town of Arsac, about 30 minutes north of Bordeaux. Our hosts are wonderful but speak not a word of English. I’ve said it before but thank God for Google translator.

Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy and since Peter is still a bit under the weather, we may take a day off. At most we’ll drive to a nearby lake or chateau. We’ll visit Bordeaux on Wednesday. Talk soon and, as always, thanks for sharing our adventures with us.

Oh, What a Day It Has Been!

We had quite the travel adventure today. Actually, it started last night. We checked into our lovely Airbnb flat in Sarlat and everything was wonderful, that is, until the bug infestation started! How many bugs does it take to have an infestation? I don’t know but one bug is one too many for me.

I saw a small bug in the living room earlier in the evening but picked it up and didn’t think anything of it. As I headed into the commode closet before going to bed a few hours later, I saw about 30 of the same creatures crawling all over the floor. I picked up as many as I could (in bunches of napkins, of course) but they just kept coming.

We went to bed and since nothing keeps Peter awake, he’s sound asleep while I’m in bed imagining bugs crawling all over me. They weren’t but you understand the creepy feeling. I went back to the commode closet with my shoe and started slapping at them but as soon as I got them, more kept coming. I couldn’t relax enough to fall asleep, so I laid on the couch, finally falling asleep around 2:30am.

We woke up this morning to bugs, not only in the commode closet, but also in the bathroom, in the tub and a few strays in the bedroom, living room and kitchen counters. They were also starting to climb the walls. That’s when we said, “We’re so outta here!” This was a first for us. After more than 60 Airbnb flats over the 6 years, we left a flat prematurely.

I had notified the host Saturday night when we first saw them, but we didn’t hear back until this morning as we were packing up to leave. He offered us the flat next door, but since it shared a wall with the bathroom/commode closet in our flat, we said no thanks. Even if I didn’t see a bug, I would have been awake all night looking for them.

Not an auspicious start to our day. But it got better as we drove about 30 minutes to the Lascaux Caves. In 1940, a boy’s dog fell down a hole. After getting the dog out, the boy and his 3 buddies climbed down the 50-foot hole to explore.

Four boys from the village of Montignac who found these remarkable caves.

What they found was a cave system containing over 600 wall and ceiling paintings from about 20,000 years ago! Not much happened with the cave because of the war, but it opened to the public in 1948. The cave got about 1200 visitors a day so in 1963, it was closed due to deterioration of the paintings caused by exposure to carbon dioxide, heat, humidity, etc. This original cave is called Lascaux I.

Lascaux II is an exact copy of two of the main caverns. It opened to visitors in 1983.

The “boys” at the opening of Lascaux II in 1983.

Lascaux III is a traveling exhibition. And Lascaux IV is an exact replica of the entire cave system. That is the one we toured today. It was really phenomenal. The paintings were just incredible. We couldn’t take photos in the cave but were able to get some in the museum.

Here’s short video of one the demonstrations of how the cave paintings were probably made.

The tour was amazing and was well worth a stop. Our 2nd stop of the day was the Chateau de Bourdeilles, about 90 minutes away. We were originally going to see a different chateau where the singer Jospsehine Baker lived, but since we weren’t spending the night in Sarlat as planned, we decided to head towards Bordeaux instead of going back where we started. Because of that, her chateau was too far out of the way, so we headed to Bourdeilles instead.

It was a beautiful drive through the French countryside, again rounding corners to see more chateaux.

Have no idea which one this is but we drove right past this pretty view of it.

This pretty view was right below the chateaux.

We got there much later than we thought, just after 4:30pm. The chateau was open until 6:00 but it was a 15-minute uphill walk from the parking lot and, according to the steward, there were a lot of stairs, most of which didn’t have handrails. Since stairs without handrails are very dangerous for us, we ended up not even going to the chateau.

But there was a pretty little church we stopped in to visit.

The back of the church makes it look much bigger than it is.

There were several beautiful statues in the church. This was my favorite.

And there was a small park with the requisite WWI monument. Virtually every town in France has one. Sometimes they are for French soldiers were served and/or died and sometimes they’re for foreign troops. We’ve seen quite a few dedicated to the bagpipe regiments of Scotland.

By this time it was almost 5pm and I had no desire to drive another 90 minutes to Saint Emilion, which is where we planned to spend the night. So, I found a beautiful boutique hotel only 10 minutes away….sold!!

We have a little courtyard outside our room.

The hotel also has a restaurant, so we don’t even have to leave to have dinner.

I still haven’t heard from Airbnb about refunding the canceled night at the bug palace and that’s one more frustration. But then I have to remember that it’s Sunday. Hopefully I’ll hear something tomorrow.

I guess there was more good than bad today but it has been a very long day. We’re looking forward to a relaxing dinner followed by a great bugless night’s sleep.

Sarlat-la-Canéda

Or, more commonly known as Sarlat, is a town in which modern history has passed it by. As a result, it is one of the best-preserved medieval cities in Europe. We planned to visit the Lascaux cave on the way here but realized that it would be closing for lunch exactly when we would have arrived. Since it’s only 25 minutes from Sarlat, we decided to visit the town today and go to the caves tomorrow as a half-day trip.

More than half of our 5-hour drive was through the beautiful countryside of southwestern France. Of course, that also meant we had to slow to 30 kph (about 18 mph) through every one of the 25-30 towns we drove through, but it was worth it. You can’t throw a rock in this part of the country without hitting a chateau, so we saw quite a few today. There was only one, though, where there was a place to grab a photo.

Chateaux de Salignac. We rounded a curve and there it was.

We had no idea where to go once we got to Sarlat so we pulled into the first parking spot we saw. It was right in front of a restaurant and because we both need the bathroom, and we were hungry, we thought it was as good a place as any to eat. I think it was the most expensive restaurant in town and had only “fancy” food. But we decided that we don’t eat fancy very often so why not splurge. Besides, we had no idea where there were any other restaurants. As with just about every other meal we’ve had, lunch was delicious. We both had a steak with bearnaise sauce, fries and a glass a wine.

The last time we ate steak was on our anniversary in September. We don’t eat it often at home either.

The best part is that lunch also came with dessert. Peter had his usual ice cream, but I tried a profiterole. I’ve seen them on Great British Baking Show but have never had one. OMG! It was delicious.

Choux (shoe) pastry with ice cream, chocolate sauce and almonds.

Well, it turns out that we didn’t need to spend $65 on lunch because about a 3-minute walk down the hill were about 10 other restaurants. But that’s okay, we don’t splurge that often and the food was delicious.

The town is adorable; loaded with medieval building with conical roofs. Of course, there’s a cathedral from the 13th century, the Saint-Sacerdos cathedral.

The Lantern of the Dead (also called Lantern of the Moors) was built in the cemetery behind the cathedral. It held a light in the top of the tower to let everyone know the location of the cemetery. Apparently, these can be found all over France, Germany, Austria and Poland. They also indicated the location of a hospital or leper colony. The idea was that people passing by would see the light and avoid that location.

The town was filled with narrow streets that were fun to wander.

Once again, we have a pretty slow internet connection. Not as bad as at Martine’s house, but not great. So, I think this will do it for today as it’s too frustrating to get pictures to upload. I think you get the idea, though, about Sarlat. If you’re ever in this region, I highly recommend a day trip stop.

Tomorrow we’ll catch the cave and maybe one of the chateaux in the area; there are about 15 in the general area. I’m sure we can find one on our way back from the cave.