We awake to more sunshine on this bright Sunday morning. Another travel day coming up, but now we are car sightseeing. We start with a wonderful breakfast served in the garden of our guest house while being studied by the neighborhood cat. Home made (fait maison) yoghurt and marmalades, accompanied by fried bread, fresh baguettes and croissants, orange juice and coffee. We visited with the proprietress for a bit; when we brought up check-out, we learned to our dismay that she could not accept credit cards, only cash. We did not have enough! So, leaving our luggage as collateral, we set off to find a cash machine on a quiet Sunday. A short walk and we found our goal, accessed our account and were soon back to claim our luggage. We had a nice chat considering her low facility for English and our very poor French. We parted friends and she even gifted us a jar of fresh made fig marmalade, the figs from the tree in her garden.
We next drove up the hill to the Citadel to park and walk around. This is a huge property and we wandered only a small bit of this city within a city. Being Sunday, local and foreign tourists, together with their noisy children and truculent teenagers, leashed dogs, and tottering elders were clogging the streets and stepping in our way. Some people are so inconsiderate!
After a long trek to the public toilets for Mark (Deb thought he had fallen somewhere and finally came looking - it was a long distance) we turned back towards the car park to get on the road towards our next stop-the city of Cahors.
We arrived in Cahors around 5:00 and quickly found our room for the night in a building right on the Main Street of town. Deb rang the bell, and after a wait, the landlord, Patrice, arrived. She quickly found the reason for the delay. Four flights of steps! She almost cancelled then and there. However he convinced us to take a look and offered to help with our luggage. He, too, is semi-retired, but up and down four flights of steps six to eight times per day evidently keeps one healthy. The accommodation was exquisite, nicely decorated and included a sleeping room, a dinette with kitchen area and a wonderful bath. There was even an air-conditioner in the bedroom!
We enjoyed our half-bottle of wine we had left over from the night before (yes there are times when we don’t consume the entire bottle,) and then struck out to find a place for our evening meal. We were skeptical, as we had not seen anything open on our drive in. No cafés, no retail establishments, nothing. There must be some strong blue laws in France. For our mid afternoon break, we were forced to stop at Chez McDo, as the Golden Arches seemed to be the only establishment allowed to be open. It was packed!
Our proprietor, Patrice, had recommended a sidewalk café Le Bistro d’ l’Isa up the street some blocks so we walked along. We found it open but, as it was only 6:45, we could only order a drink. Dinner service in France does not start until 7:00, anywhere. We sat at a sidewalk table, looked at the menu and found what we wanted to eat, we then ordered a bottle of Cahors area wine to start and soon were happy we had arrived early, as the tables quickly filled up. We enjoyed a huge cheeseburger with frites and a large cheese omelette. We skipped dessert this time but did stroll up the street away to a small local market where we picked up two more bottles of wine, some local cheese and some Perrier for provisions for the next few days. We climbed the Mt. Everest of staircases, ensconced ourselves in the air conditioning and read until our eyelids dropped. Note their is no talk of television watching while in France - finding English language television has become impossible.
Monday morning, we awoke to another lovely breakfast, this one delivered to our door by our proprietor, who also lives in the apartment next door. He owns the floor and has converted our small area to a B&B, He may also own another unit in the building, although our translation is a bit unclear on that fact. Anyway, the breakfast this day was a selection of cheeses, orange juice, croissants, baguettes and jams, together with the requisite cafe au lait and cafe noir. This delightful accommodation with so much food and so much room, was only $89 per night! We told him he needs to charge more but from the next guy!
We lugged our two small cases back down the mountain, with another courteous assist from Patrice, plugged the meter for our vehicle parked on the street out front overnight, and struck out to explore Cahors. This city, surrounded by a meander of the Lot river, with steep limestone cliffs on all sides, was originally a Celtic settlement, prior to the Roman conquest around 50 BC. Their are remains of the Roman fortifications, and we walked the old city area, adjacent to our guest house, taking in the small medieval streets and then across the main square (which is conveniently a huge underground parking garage) to the covered historic bridge over the Rive Lot. The bridge now is only for pedestrian traffic, but is properly dramatic. By the time we returned to the car we were drenched in sweat as the temperature had risen to 32º C (90ºF) and the humidity wasn’t far behind. We cranked up the AC in the car and drove out of town, glad we hadn’t wilted, but also happy to have gotten the exercise and seen the marvelous town.
Our goal today is the city of Brantome, but first we needed to stop in the city of Sarlat, a medieval city, one that Deb had visited some eleven years previous on a trip with dear friend Glenda. We found a car park, and some public toilets, complete with an attendant and a 1€ Per person fee - beautifully clean and well worth the price. We began our wander around the old city, still a very hot day, and we eventually stopped at a sidewalk café for a noon meal. Another croque monsieur and another omelette, this time a mushroom one - not nearly as good as the cheese omelettes of days before. Accompanied by a glass of wine, and a huge carafe of ice cold water.
We returned to the car and then headed into the heart of the Perigord region towards Brantome. We typed the final exact destination into Google-Maps and ended up on a small country road at a large old farmhouse with the sign saying Escapade. This was our B&B- not what we were expecting. Our proprietress was out the door to meet and greet us before we could drive away to search for something different. She is Isabelle and she is a fortyish woman originally from Belgium. She has always wanted to run a B&B and looked at over 22 properties before she found this one. It is really amazing, very ecologically friendly and quite the setting. There is even a pond out front with decking and chaise lounge chairs - “the pool” as she says, with a pumped waterfall. We decided to stay and hauled our luggage up the single staircase to our lovely room with en suite for the next two days.
It had been a long day’s drive, so rather than walk the 20 minutes into town to a restaurant or drive and risk getting lost in the dark on the return, we settled for our cheese and wine on the front portico, overlooking the pond and studying the sunset. Beautiful.
The next morning we were up for our 8:00 breakfast of croissants, baguettes, fait maison yoghurt, a fried egg and coffee with apple juice on the side. Delectable. WE then loaded ourselves and our backpack into the DZ for a drive around the Perigord. First stop was the Grottes de Villars, the caves of Villars. The Perigord is famous for its caves, within which are Paleolithic drawings, Lascaux being the most famous. Lascaux however is now closed to tourists and the French government has created a facsimile of the drawings within a modern building. the reason being that the lights and the carbon dioxide from all the visitors was destroying the drawings. Villars however is not that visited, so we were able to spend an amazing hour plus underground viewing the stalactites, stalagmites and the columnar formations. At the end of the tour we entered a chamber with some drawings, one of which depicted a man. This, we believe, is the only extant drawing of a human figure in all the cave art discovered so far.
Next is is on to the small village of S. Jean du Cole, or St. Jean on the river Cole. Here we parked and walked the village, locating a wonderful cafe for our afternoon meal of a Salad du chef with salmon, a casserole en croute with squab or chicken (we’re not sure which) and a carafe de van rouge. We enjoyed the meal, the scenery and the setting. Next we drove through a few more small villages before heading back to our “farm house” for a glass of wine before heading back into the village of Brantome for our 7:00 PM dinner reservation.
We were seated in a stunning outside garden area and presented with the menu by the Chef de Cuisine, who spoke excellent English and even knew, or claimed to know, where Nebraska was located. After an amuse Bouche of gazpacho, we started with a shared appetizer of fois gras, followed by roast duck for Deb and a cold roast veal with garlic aioli for Mark. Yes, yes, we know! All bad and inhumane choices but that calf and goose died for us! It was an honor to eat them. We shared a bottle of scrumptious St. Emilion wine and enjoyed a pair of desserts - a millefleure of strawberries with basil inflected cream, and a selection of fromage. One of the best meals we have ever enjoyed in France, unhurried, unpretentious and excellently prepared. We motored home in the descending darkness and retired for the evening, resting for our final driving day of the Great Adventure.
Wednesday morning we were up, packed, showered and down to our croissant, yoghurt and coffee by 7:45. We took leave of Isabelle and her beautiful home and drove off toward Bordeaux, an approximately 3 hour drive. We returned to the Gare St. Jean, turned in the rental car and then had a coffee while we waited for our TGV high speed train to Paris and our final two nights away from our kids and friends and our own charming little cottage.
The TGV high speed train to Paris was quick and easy, especially as we had 1st class seats and plenty of space to wrangle our luggage. Deb had a small scare when reading about our hotel in Paris. All indications were that it had no lift and no A/C and sounded like a youth hostel! Upon closer examination, it turns out there are TWO La Perle Hotels, one near the station which is indeed a 2 star hotel and OUR La Perle, a very nice four star with A/C and and elevator. Upon arrival in Gare Montparnasse, we stood in the taxi line and eventually loaded the luggage and headed into town towards our destination, Hotel Perle, in the 6th Arrondissement. Our hotel is very nice, has a lift, is relatively small and excellently located just 1/2 block off the Place Suplice , with its huge fountain and the Eglis Suplice lurking overhead in the background. It is on the Rue de Canettes and is a very short stroll from everywhere and many, many restaurants and bars. Turns out, quite a LOT of bars as we are very near the Sorbonne and there are beautiful young people everywhere. It was really fun to watch all the goings-on.
As the clock neared 7:00, we took the lift down and walked around a bit to find a cafe and a place to eat. We ended up at the Cafe Mabillion for an Omelette and a “Minced Beef” with a fried egg, essentially a large hamburger, accompanied by some vin rouge and frites for all.We walked back and retired by 10:30, having had a long travel day.
Thursday morning we had a lovely breakfast in the hotel garden room and then stepped out for exploration. It had been raining yesterday, and more was forecast for today; luckily we had packed our rain jackets in our carry on bags and so were prepared. We wandered down to Notre Dame, site of our last shenanigans in 2019 when the Cathedral burned (not our fault, really!) We attempted to take a photo from the same spot as in 2019, and after a number of attempts (selfies are hard for short armed people), we think we succeeded. Next we walked along the Ile de la Cite streets and finally back towards our home base.
Of course we stopped twice during the day for a glass of wine and some major people watching at the cafes along the way. After all, it was our last full day of vacation and who knows when we will back to Paris! Back in our room, to reorganize all the luggage and grab some cat naps before going back around the corner for our last meal in Paris. Nothing special, except for our memories, another Omelette and a Salade Parisien with a lot of ham & cheese on top. Vin Rouge, baguettes and a toast to the City of Lights. While eating our supper, we learned of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. So in our years of travel, we have experienced earthquakes, the death of 2 Popes, the burning of a national landmark and the death of the longest serving monarch in British history, again none of it our fault!! Home to Hotel Perle for a last check of luggage and then to sleep.
Friday morning we were up and showered and ready to go in the Lobby for our 7:30 AM pick up, which was actually 20 minutes early! We arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport by 8:40 and commenced the check-in process, divesting ourselves of four large bags and then taking the long walk through security and down the walk to our gate. Almost there when Deb realized that she had left her watch and bracelet back at security, so we backtracked and retrieved the articles. As we are traveling Business Class this time, we found the lounge and enjoyed a cup of coffee, a croissant and a cream puff, before boarding the big bird and heading home to Omaha.
We have visited three countries, Ireland, England and France, driven three vehicles, two on the “wrong side” of the road and logged well over 2,000 miles with nary an accident nor ticket. Lots of wrong turns and u-turns, but that is part of the fun. Lots of bickering but also lots of laughs and some new found insights into each other. Loads of great food and wine, as you no doubt have noticed. This Great Adventure was truly a trip of a lifetime for us. We are, however, very happy to be home.
