Charming Sarlat

Sarlat is a lovely little town in the Dordogne (Perigord) region of southwest France, a well-preserved but lively medieval town, a good location from which to explore the region's highlights: caves, canoe trips, duck farms, nearbly charming towns.

Frankly, Paul took so many great photos of Sarlat, it was hard to choose photos, but here are some.

On Saturday, the town of Sarlat turns into a market town, selling vegetables and fruits, cheeses, foie gras, bread, local wine, and walnut cakes, as well as handbags and clothing and souvenirs. Paul and I bought bread, ham, and cheese, as well as delicious small "Charlotte" strawberries for our picnic the next day.

On the last of our three nights in Sarlat, they had a festival of 10,000 candles, lighting up the narrow streets and winding lanes of the town. Charmant! and utterly magical.

Canoeing on the Dordogne River

The day before our canoe trip on the Dordogne River in southwest France, it was cold and rained like crazy. Many of us were pretty pessimistic about the idea of spending two hours in a canoe. But the weather shifted, and we had a glorious, sunny afternoon, with blue skies, pleasantly warm air, soft breezes, and smooth water. It could not have been a better day for canoeing!

Most canoes held two people, so Paul and I had our own. We pushed off first, and could not believe the gorgeous, calm waters. Much of the river has lovely greenery on both sides, but we also passed three bridges, several castles, and some beautiful little towns, typical of the Perigord Region.

It was a terrific experience! And nobody fell in the water.

Group photos: Rick Steves' tour of the West and South of France

Since Paul has a good camera, it was used to take two photos of our group of wonderful friends and fellow travelers on Rick Steves' tour of Western and Southern France. Our group has 22 people, 20 Americans and two Canadians, plus our terrific guide, Arnaud, and our skilled driver, Philippe.

For more info about Arnaud, who is fluent in at least five languages and has studied art history and French history as well as professional tour guiding, see http://www.french-guide.com/. Paul and Dori highly recommend him!

One of these photos was taken at the Pont du Gard, the amazing Roman aqueduct built in 19 B.C. The other was taken just before our canoeing trip on the Dordogne River.

Ducks and geese

The French love to eat "foie gras" which tastes like liverwurst but much much better. In America, we called this "pate" but here we found out that that is the wrong word for it. In France, pate is a cheap meat, mixed with pork, and only sometimes contains fine liver paste.

"Foie gras" translates directly as "fatty liver" but that gives the wrong idea completely. It is usually served as a circle of very delicate liver paste, so tender it nearly melts in your mouth. It is made of duck's liver or goose liver, but not ordinary ducks or geese. Instead, it comes from ducks or geese that have been "force fed" for the last 20-28 days of their lives.

We visited a farm where they raise ducks and geese for foie gras. The birds get to roam freely in fenced-in grassy areas for most of their lives. Then they go into a barn, where they get fed large amounts of corn, twice a day, right into their mouths. Their liver grows up to four times its normal size! Also, their meat becomes very tender.

A lot of people get very upset when they hear that ducks and geese are force fed. We learned that ducks and geese don't have a "gag reflex" like people do. Also, since they are migratory birds, they are designed to overeat for a while before migrating.

Anyway, it was interesting to watch. This lady has been raising ducks and geese this way since she was twelve, and her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother did the same. That's hard for me to imagine.

What do you think of this?

Caveman drawings

Try to imagine what a caveman might draw on the walls of a cave. Stick figures? Pictures of people he knew? Think again!

From 12,000 to 18,000 years ago, some people who were humans like us -- maybe a little hairier, but just as smart -- drew and painted pictures inside caves in southwest France that amaze people today. Some are just outlines, others are painted in bright colors. But all are pictures of animals that lived around them. This includes mammoths (a kind of huge hairy elephant) and woolly rhinos, both of which are extinct today. Nobody knows why they painted these pictures, but they are remarkably accurate and detailed.

We visited a cave called Rouffignac, which has more than 100 drawings of mammoths, on the walls and ceilings deep inside a huge cave. We had to go in on a small train, and each part of the cave is kept completely dark except when people visit that part. Only a few people can visit at a time, because they want to preserve the drawings from damage that comes from people breathing carbon dioxide and touching the paintings. We weren't allowed to take photos at all. But when we finished the tour, I took photos of some copies other people had made of the drawings.

Can you imagine, 14,000 years ago, people dressed in furs, lying on their backs, drawing such pictures on the ceiling of a cave, lit only by a torch?

There are many such cave paintings in this region, including the most fabulous and famous, called Lascaux. It was near here that a man named Mr. Magnon discovered five skeletons in 1870 of people who had lived here in prehistory. These people are now called Cro-Magnons, and they were anatomically identical to people today. However, they lived at the same time as the Neanderthals, who were human-like but looked very different.

Because of this discovery, the study of prehistoric man really started in this area, and there is a big museum of prehistory that we visited. Outside it, high on a cliff, stands a statue of Cro-Magnon man, as someone imagined he looked.

Sad chapter in history

France is much bigger than many of us Americans realize. We drove about eight hours from Chinon to our next stop, at Sarlat in southwest France. On the way, we stopped at a tiny village called Mortemart for a picnic lunch. That's our French guide, Arnaud, opening a bottle of wine for us.

After that, we drove to one of the saddest places in France. It is a village called Oradour-sur-Glane, and it was totally wiped out by the Nazis during World War II, in June 1944. This village had no guns or fighters, just ordinary French villagers. Yet some Nazi troops marched into town and rounded up all 642 people who lived here. The kids had to leave their schools, the farmers and shopkeepers and housewives, everybody, had to come to the square.

Then the women and children were locked up in the church. The men were separated into smaller groups, taken to different parts of the village and shot. After that, the Nazis burned down the church, with the the women and children inside. Then they burned down the entire village. Almost everyone in the village was killed that day.

Today, the village is left as it was, with most buildings destroyed as they were that day. You can see stone ruins of homes and shops, burned out hulks of cars and sewing machines and strollers, and even the remains of the church.

Seeing this place of horror really makes you think. I learned a new word, in French, on many of the signs: "Recueillez-vous." It means: stop, think, go deep inside your heart, reflect. I may have misspelled it, but I remember how it felt.

It's hard to imagine what can make people be so cruel to other people.

Castles of the Loire Valley

France has hundreds of castles and palaces, and many of the most beautiful are in the valley of the Loire River, about three hours southwest of Paris. We visited only a few of them, starting with one of the most famous, Chenonceau.

They call it the "castle of six ladies" because over the years, six ladies have been in charge of it: building it, decorating it, expanding it. The first one was a mistress of the king, and the second was his wife, who kicked out the mistress as soon as the king died. It forms a bridge of graceful arches across a small river. Look at this amazing bedroom! Can you imagine sleeping in a bed like this?

The second chateau was lesser known, called Villandry. It was owned by wealthy noble families until 1905, when a Spanish science professor and his wife, the daughter of a wealthy American family from Pennsylvania, bought it. They raised six children in luxury there. They did a lot to fix the place up, but the most amazing thing they did was research about Renaissance gardens and create some absolutely fantastic gardens, with both flowers and vegetables. Can you recognize the shapes? I took two of these photos from the top of a tower, which is called a "keep."

We ended the day at Chinon, which has a fortress high on a hill. It was in ruins until recently, then the French rebuilt it. It is famous for two reasons: first, Joan of Arc came here to beg the Prince of France to let her lead an army to drive out the English. She was only sixteen years old and she had never fought before, but she said she heard divine voices, and the prince trusted her. She led the army and won many battles before the English captured her and killed her by burning her alive.

Earlier, this fortress was occupied by the English king Henry II and his sons, Richard the Lion-Hearted and Geoffrey and John. The three sons were always plotting against each other, trying to get power. Sounds like a nasty family. John was later a much-hated king of England during the time of Robin Hood. Here is what the fortress looks like now, after the rebuilding.