Good morning! It is Friday, May 22 and we are in Sarlat la Caneda. Today we see Lascaux II and go canoeing on the Dordogne River. But more of that later.
We have been offline due to lack of internet connection or sheer exhaustion. By the time we return to our room, we have had such a full day, we crash into bed.
I must tell you about Wednesday, our first day in Sarlat. We had spent the night on a goat farm and had seen the animals and heard about the making of goat cheese. Great farm house and with thick stone walls, you could hardly hear the rooster in the morning.
We drove toward Sarlat, stopping in the town of Montignac to buy Friday's tickets to Lascaux II, and then toured the fascinating Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies. It contains artifacts from the many prehistoric caves in this Dordogne region of France. We only went to the top floor to see the artifact portion because we had less than an hour available.The highlight of this morning was Font de Gaume - the only remaining cave in the world where the 14,ooo year old polychrome cave paintings are open to the public. Now acquiring the necessary advance reservations is difficult. Our guide, John, called for two and a half hours before someone would answer the phone. When he picked up the tickets, he noticed the phones were not ringing. They told him they were short of staff and when the office was open and people were there, they turned off the phones and left them go to the voice mail announcement that you must call advance for reservations. Only about 180 people are allowed in the cave a day.
How wonderful it was. The paintings are everywhere inside, although only a small portion are lighted for normal viewing. The proportions on the animals are perfect.
The cave artists used perspective in drawing groups of animals. Foreshortening was used in drawing legs closer and further from the viewer. The artists used realistic shading. Most amazing, they used the contours of the cave (shadows from rocks seen by torchlight) to create the rounded shading of animal bellies - some were not drawn in but could be seen only by torch. The animals were in color. The colors were blended into various tones. The techniques used 14,000 years ago by Cro-Magnon man were lost and would not be in widespread use again until the 15th century European Renaissance. This picture is the most famous from the cave, the male reindeer is tenderly licking the pregnant female before him. You can see the delicate shading and emotion. What an amazing people must have done these art works. This is a site not to be missed if you are lucky to get advance reservations, or show up at the ticket office when someone has cancelled.We checked into our great apartment/hotel, Villa Consuls and then drove to Vitrac for a private cooking demonstration by Philippe Latreille, owner of Hotel la Treille and restaurant.
Our demonstration covered
- three foie gras first courses (sauteed with black cherry and wine sauce, poached with green walnut sauce and pate in a terraine),
- two duck main courses(tournados and duck l'orange) and
- two desserts (vervain and sorrel creme brule and strawberries in a wine, peach, cassis and blackberry cordial sauce).
Philippe was charming and thorough in his demonstrations. John translated to English for us.
We tasted the sauces and ate foie gras and then drove to a recommended store in Domme to buy oils and other special ingredients to take home.
Since we were so taken with the natural caves in this region, while we were buying out the shop, John found a tour of Domme cave, nicknamed the "Acropolis of Black Perigord" starting immediately. It was a fascinating array of limestone formations: stalactites and stalagmites, an unusual limestone disk in the ceiling and pools of water. The cave had provided shelter to people during the Wars of Religion and the Second World War, but was now home to hundreds of fuzzy little bats sleeping on the ceiling, who were apparently not disturbed by the electric lighting or tourists below.
We would return to the restaurant at 7:00 to eat what we had learned about.
Now I must tell you, during the last four months, I have worked out daily and have eaten neither fats nor sugars and have lost nearly twenty pounds in preparation for the walking required on this trip.
We arrived at the restaurant and had a lovely walnut apertif.
We ate two foie gras starters with white wine.
The duck tournados were accompanied by a local red wine. I ate half.
The desserts arrived, one flambe. I took two bites of the creme brule. I tried to fish the fresh strawberries from the ice cream and sauce, and then began gulping water from the carafe d'eau.
I felt totally disarranged and went out of the restaurant to stand outside. Back in the hotel, I gulped more water to cool off, tried not to move the rest of the sleepless night. Getting up only to find several handfulls of Advil to try to thwart the splitting headache. The next morning I found a market and some NONFAT yogurt to calm my overtaxed stomach.We drove to Rocamadour and I had a strong cup of coffee, more Advil and experienced a miraculous healing. I avoided all fats, sweets and alcohol the rest of the day and am now returned to health.
But, we must now get ready for canoeing, so our tales of the picturesque French villages from Thursday, and of course the rest of Amsterdam, Normandy with the Bromages and Brittany will have to wait for a new post.
Bon chance to you all. We are off.
Love from Janet and Rozanne
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